After Lord Lanadowne had made a very sympathetic reply to
Lord Ribblesdale, and had given the names of the Committee who would inquire into expenditure, he announced that, though the Admiralty and the War Office were not to come within the scope of inquiry, they intended to avail them- selves of every opportunity to keep within the strictest bounds the immense expenditure passing through their hands. Lord Kitchener was going into these matters himself with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and had appointed a Depart- mental Committee at the War Office to deal with the whole subject. Lord Cromer in a very notable speech compared the public attitude towards expenditure to that of a gambler who had lost all sense of the true value of money. Thrift was by no means a British national characteristic, and no class of the community was as thrifty as the corresponding class in Continental countries. If anything was to be done in the way of public economy, an example must be set by Parliament itself, and especially by the House of Commons. The strangest illusion that had ever possessed the public mind was that what was called a popular assembly was an efficient guardian of the public purse.
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