§ Before I have done with the expenditure for 1902–3 there is a subject on which the Committee will wish to have some information, and to which I rejoice to think that I can refer almost entirely in the past tense—I mean the war expenditure. The Committee will want to know what is the total charge which the war has entailed upon us, and also how much of the war expenditure has been met from taxation and how much from borrowed money. I will do my best to give the Committee full information on the subject, but they will understand, I am sure, that it is one which bristles with difficulties, and that almost impossible to earmark with any accuracy the charges due to a great war. You cannot draw any precise line between the expenditure which has been caused by the war and the expenditure which would have been incurred had there been no war. Even if you could, I doubt if an estimate of the cost of the war, which included all the many indirect additions to expenditure which must result from the war, would serve the purpose of the Committee. The definition of cost, I submit, must be framed on common sense lines, and after much consideration of every alternative method, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot give the information in any better form than that in which it has already been presented in a Return moved for by the hon. Member for Poplar. I do not claim for it, and no one 235 could claim for it, that it is absolutely accurate, but it is certainly as accurate as any other return is likely to be, and therefore if the hon. Member for Poplar will move for a return of a similar character to that which he has already obtained, I shall be very happy to giant it. The matter is one which is quite familiar to the Committee, and I do not propose propose on this occasion to go into the details, but I will give one or two leading points. The charges on account of the wars in South Africa and China during the last four years up to the 31st of March, 1903, are estimated to have amounted to £217,000,000, or more than a quarter as much as the computed cost of the great French war which lasted eight times as long. Of this amount there was defrayed out of revenue £67,500,000. There will, therefore, have been met out of capital a balance of £149,500,000. This means that 31 percent of the expenditure was charged to income and 69 per cent. was charged to capital. It must be remembered, however, that we shall got at an early date £4,000,000 from the Transvaal Guaranteed Loan, and we shall also get £30,000,000 in respect of the war contribution which the Transvaal has to make us in addition to the repayment of the sum of. £3,000,000 temporarily advanced last autumn to the Transvaal Government. There is also the British share of the Chinese indemnity to be borne in mind, which may be put at about £6,000,000. In this way it may ultimately prove that the net amount to be charged to capital on account of the war expenditure is not more than about £110,000,000 or £40,000,000 less than the amount I stated above. In this case the proportion will have been 38 per cent. charged against revenue, and 62 per cent. charged against capital.
§ MR. SYDNEY BUXTON (Tower Hamlets, Poplar)That includes the amount due to the suspension of the Sinking Fund?