Circular No. 164 Mr. Walter Elliot's reported statement that, owing
to the demands of rearmament, "we may have to make inroads on the social services," seemed to have lost its significance after his own repudiation of it and the Prime Minister's assurance, in the House of Commons, that the social services would not be cut. Mr. Chamberlain's statement was, and still is, held to have exorcised finally the bogey raised by Mr. Elliot; it is, therefore, unsatisfactory and disturbing to find that already a circular, No. 164, has been issued by the Board of Education to the local authorities, which in several areas has led to the abandonment, on grounds of economy, of approved schemes for developing or extending secondary schools. In the L.C.C. area ten such schemes have been suspended and, it is feared, will be cancelled finally ; another twelve are reported to have been suspended in the Surrey area. There are reasons for thinking that these unfortunate results may be due to ambiguities in the wording of the circular ; if that is so, the ambiguity should be cleared up at once. Nothing could arouse greater disunity, or more profound mistrust of the Government's intentions, than suspicions that the social services would be made to pay for rearmament.
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