When the debate was resumed on Monday, Mr. Asquith moved
an amendment regretting that the extravagance of the Government had imposed on the country a crushing burden of taxation. The Geddes Committee Report showed that when the Committee was set up the Government thought it possible to reduce expenditure by £175,000,000, the equivalent of a 3s. 4d. Income Tax. The Treasury ought to have done what the Committee had been doing. The Admiralty's counterblast to the Report offered a grotesque spectacle. The main savings proposed were on Defence and Education. Defence, Mr. Asquith contended, ought not now to cost £170,000,000, as compared with £80,000,000 before the War. There was room for economy in our educational service, but the Committee's suggestions were most unwise—notably the proposal to raise the age of entrance into the schools to six years and the pro- posal to increase the average size of classes. As chairman of the Universities Commission, he declared that Oxford and Cambridge must receive more State aid. Ill-judged parsimony in education was not economy but waste. Mr. W. Graham, for the Labour Party, strongly supported Mr. Asquith's plea.
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