The Peace-Time Army
The recent White Paper on Defence indicated that the number of men and women serving in the armed forces on March 31st, 1948, would be 1,o87,00o, as against 1,427,000 on December 31st, 1946. The financial reflection of this is seen in the Service Estimates pub- lished this week. Those for the Army naturally show the greatest reduction, for it is here that there is the largest scope. The fall is ostensibly no less than £294,000,000, but it is actually greater, owing to changes in the system of accounting. No allowance, more- over, has been made for a supplementary vote of £5o,000,000 in 1946-7, over and above the original estimate of £68z,000,000. That is as it should be, for a similar supplementary estimate may become necessary in the ensuing year, though it is unlikely to be of the order of L50,000,000. Such a reduction, accompanied by comparable cuts in the Air and Navy Estimates, will obviously simplify Mr. Dalton's Budget problems considerably. The total saving on the three Ser- vices amounts to £394,000,000: Even the reduced expenditure must be closely scrutinised, and in no department of national life is the elimination of waste more necessary than in the Services. The ques- tion, also, of whether in the present man-power crisis we can afford armed forces of over a million needs to be closely considered. But here precipitate conclusions must be avoided. The Defence White Paper contained a sobering list of British commitments which no political party would be wilting to evade.
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