Modern warfare is no inexpensive pastime although Hitler and his colleagues think lightly of it in comparison with the achievement of their ambition. The time has passed when a few thousand men could be flung into action and wage a victorious war by feeding on the hapless countryside and the share of spoils. With millions of men to be mobilized, vast organizations to be maintained, and the utilization of munitions and other resources in rapid and incalculable quantities as conditions require, financial side is of a magnitude incomprehensible to the man-in-the-street accustomed to dealing in tens or hundreds of pounds, Bat in the resistance to the colossal movement of aggression which has developed in Europe, the British Government has shown that no price is too high to defeat it and maintain the common decencies of life and rights of liberty and freedom to which every people is entitled to enjoy. The first War Emergency Budget has passed all stages in Parliament and has received the Royal Assent. It provides for an estimated revenue of £995,000,000 and an expenditure of £1,933,- 000,000 over an indefinite period for if this sum is inadequate further credits must be voted. This reveals not only the nation's determina-lion to carry its intentions to the utmost limit, but also the financial resources available against the extent of Germany's effort. The budgetary estimate represents one of the largest ever voted for war purposes by any nation at the beginning of hostilities, but it is by no means the largest. It is indicative of the probable cost of the war and the sacrifice which the nation must be prepared to safe. Britain entered the last war with an ordinary budget of a little over £200,000,000 and, with supplementary estimates for war purposes, £569,000,- 000. By 1916, with an ordinary budget of £500,- 000,000, the total with supplementary estimates for war purposes was in the £2,000,000 000 category, and by the last year of the war, while the ordinary budget stood at £842,000,000, the huge figure of £2,977,000,000 had been reached. At present, it is estimated that the war is costing Britain £6,000,000 a day: in the last war at ts peak the expenditure was '£8,000,000 a day. "If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God we ha' paid in full" declared Kipling. In this war there may be even greater sacrifices, but the British Empire's ability to foot a bill which Germany cannot stand is a potent factor in the councils of the "mad men of Europe" now engaged from Berlin in attempting to plunge Europe into anarchy, despotism and destruction.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.