h has been so lamentably low in Europe in the course of the
present war. According to their original estimates the proportion of
war cost borne out of taxation seems to have been on very much the
same level as ours, and this has all through the war been very much
lower than the results achieved by our ancestors at the time of the
Napoleonic and Crimean wars.

On this point the proportion of our expenditure, which has been borne
out of revenue, the Chancellor stated that up to the end of last
financial year, March 31, 1918, the proportion of total expenditure
borne out of revenue was 26.3 per cent. On the estimates which he
submitted to the House in his Budget speech on April 22nd, the
proportion of total expenditure met out of revenue during the current
financial year will be 28.3 per cent., and the proportion calculated
over the whole period to the end of the current year will be 26.9 per
cent. These proportions, however, are between total revenue and total
expenditure during the war period. The proportion, of course, is
not so high when we try to calculate actual war revenue and war
expenditure by deducting on each side at a rate of L200 millions a
year as representing normal expenditure and revenue and leaving out
advances to Allies and Dominions. On this basis the proportion of war
expenditure met out of war revenue up to March 31, 1918, was, the
Chancellor stated, 21.7 per cent. For the year 1917-18 it was 25.3 per
cent., for the current year it will be 26.5 per cent., and for the
whole period up to the end of the current year 23.3 per cent. The
corresponding figures for the Napoleonic and Crimean wars are given by
Sir Bernard Mallet in his book on British Budgets as 47 per cent. and
47.4 per cent. So that it will be seen that, judged by this test, our
war finance, though very much better than Germany's, is not on so high
a standard as that set by previous wars. It is true, of course, that
the rate of expenditure during the present war has been on a scale
which altogether dwarfs the outgoing in any previous struggle. The
Napoleonic War is calculated to have cost some L800 millions, having
lasted some twenty-three years. Last year we spent L2696 millions, of
which near L2000 millions may be taken as war cost, after deducting
normal expenditure and loans to Allies.

Nevertheless, this argument of the enormous cost of the present war
does not seem to me to be a good reason why the war should be financed
badly, but r