Letters to the Editor
The Financial Outlook P. R. Lane Hogarth Peter Quennell The Doomed Island Moray McLaren Little Dorrit PK W. Robson PEN New Poems David Carver
THE FINANCIAL OUTLOOK
SIR,—It is curious how financial and economic 'experts' can miss the obvious; and your corre- spondent who wrote on July 22, although devoting nearly two columns to his thesis. never once mentioned the basic cause of our present financial embarrassments—the almost totally unproductive expenditure of £1,500 million per annum on 'defence.' Your corre- spondent makes reference to the bankers' letter to The Times; but in the correspondence which ensued there, only one or two writers suggested that the armaments bill might have some bearing on the situation.
To some of us who have a little to do with financial ar commercial matters, it is extremely irritating and, what is more important, posi- tively dangerous to the country's economy that armaments have been allowed, for whatever so-called legitimate reasons, to take the major place in Government expenditure; and the consequent unbalance in trade, while, possibly. contributing to development in certain minor directions, has had its effect in the now- notorious delays in the delivery of British goods and our frequent apparent inability to provide what our customers require.
The strain on the country's economy which was forecast by certain much-despised 'Left- ish' politicians at the outset of the arms race. which has now been proceeding under the governments of both parties for some years, is now becoming apparent to us all; yet the Chancellor is still only taking palliative measures; and on the very day on which he announced further restrictions on what some of us consider to be a more worthy expendi- ture, the Under-Secretary of the War Office was declining to consider a reduction in the period of conscripted 'service.' Truly we are getting 'guns for butter,' despite derationing and some peoples increased consumption of the latter commodity.—Yours faithfully,
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