232 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F, 



Section F.— ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 

 Peesident of the Section: Sir Hugh Bell, Bart., C.B. 



TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9. 

 The President delivered the following Address : 



At last, after an interval of three years, the British Association resumes its 

 meeting- and takes np the business which the Council decide.(l to suspend during 

 the period of the war. 



The meeting at Newcastle in 1916 found the world plunged in warfare of 

 a most destructive character, and left us unable to determine either the extent 

 of the destruction or the i^robable period of its continuance. Few would 

 have then believed it possible that the following year would find the situation 

 unchanged and the outlook at least as black as in 1916. Much less would it 

 have been believed that in the summer of 191S we should be in even greater 

 anxiety as to the final outcome, and that not till the early winter of that 

 year should ws be relieved of the niglitmare of horrors under which we 

 suffei'ed in the five years which have elapsed since Augujst 1914. 



It is said that at a very early stage Lord Kitchener foretold a war of five 

 years, and on his interlocutor protesting and expressing his belief that such 

 a thing was impossible, reduced his estimate by one year, ' provided Russia 

 held out so long.' The collapse of Tsardom coming when it did may be 

 taken as fully justifying Lord Kitchener's estimate, for not till three months 

 of the fifth year had run out were we greeted with the joyful news of the 

 Armistice. Many months had to elapse before the Armistice was ended by 

 a treaty of peace with our chief opponent. Even then we found ourselves 

 engaged in more or less active w-arlike operations in various parts of Europe, 

 Asia, and Africa. To-day we are still unable to review in any but a preliminary 

 fashion the economic or other results of the war as a whole. We shall have 

 to wait till long after our meeting at Bournemouth before a complete survey 

 is possible. 



Meanwhile, let us, in passing, take note of the fact that the cessation of 

 hostilities did not carry with it the cessation of expenditure. The figures 

 given each week in the Economist show the daily disbursements of the kingdom 

 to have amounted to 6^ million pounds for the twenty-one weelcs from 

 November 16 to April 12. I append a table giving them for the tw-elve weeks 

 prio'r to the date of the Armistice and for the twelve weeks following it, 

 omitting the week in which it fell. It will be seen that whereas from 

 August 24 to November 9 our expenditure amounted to 585^- million pounds, 

 from November 23 to February 8 we expended 564 million pounds, a reduction 

 of only 21^ million, or about a quarter of a million a day. This means 

 that the debt with which the war burdened us continued to augment long 

 after the cause of it had ceased to operate. The Chancellor of the Exchequer's 

 statement in August that the expenditure even then exceeded four million 

 pounds a day against pre-war expenditure of £541,000 shows that we are 

 still vastly exceeding our income. Even if we take into account the interest 

 on the war debt, which amounts to about one million pounds a day, it is 

 clear that the various obligations undertaken by the Government during the 

 war continue to impose on us a huge expenditure which is largely in excess 

 of our revenue. 



