§ There is one other fact intermixed with the accounts which, I think, will interest the Committee, and that is the proportion of our expenditure which has been borne out of Revenue. So far up to the end of last year, 31st March, 1918 (four years), the proportion of total expenditure borne out of Revenue was 26.3 per cent., and for the year 1917–18, alone, it was practically the same figure. For 1918–19, on the Estimates which I am now submitting to the House, the proportion of total expenditure met out of Revenue will be 28.3 per 702 cent., and the proportion calculated over the whole period to the end of the current year (five years) will be 26.9. But perhaps some hon. Members will recollect that last year a distinction was drawn between the proportion of total expenditure and the proportion of war expenditure. The calculation was made on the basis of deducting on each side £200,000,000 as representing the normal expenditure and Revenue and leaving out the advances to the Allies and Dominions. I shall give the figures calculated in this way, though, as a matter of fact, I think the proportion of total expenditure is the more natural and more important way of looking at it. Taking that method of calculation, the proportion of war expenditure, met out of war revenue, up to 31st March, 1918—that is, four years—was 21.7 per cent. For the year 1917-–18 alone it was 25.3 per cent. For the current year it will be 26.5 per cent., or, for the whole period up to the end of the current year (five years), it will be 23.3 per cent.
§ I shall conclude this section by stating the total amount which has been raised by war revenue. The total war revenue raised up to the end of last year was £1,044,000,000. On the basis of the Estimates now before the House, by the end of the current year it will have reached £1,686,000,000.
§ This concludes my examination of the financial figures for the current year. I have tried to put them to the House exactly as they are—to put the situation without making it too favourable. The calculations have all been made on a basis against us rather than in our favour. I am inclined to say this, and I think the House will agree with me, that, looking at these figures, looking at what the figures will be at the end of the year, the financial strength of this country, after five years of war, will be far greater than anyone could have expected in advance. These results are, I think, an amazing testimony to the financial stability of this country.