Surplus & Beggars

A budget surplus of $160,000,000. That was the fat and juicy stake for which hungry Britons scrabbled last week. Not until April 17 will the 1934-35 budget be announced and last week canny Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain would let out not one word of what it will contain. Meanwhile taxpayers, unemployed, the Army, the Navy, the air force all sought to show why they were most fitted to take care of the money.

One thing seemed certain. The new Chamberlain budget, disregarding the implications in the passage of the Johnson anti-loan bill by the U. S. Congress, will include not even a token payment on Britain's War debt to the U. S. The two most insistent demands are for a lowering of the income tax at least sixpence in the pound, and restoration of the 10% cut in the Dole which was adopted three years ago. Politically it will be almost impossible to do one without the other. Even though unemployment dropped by 117,000 last month, restoration of the Dole alone will cost $65,000,000 or two-fifths of the entire surplus. There remain restoration of the sinking fund payments suspended last year, the government salary cuts, which everyone from King George to the village postman took in 1931, and unexpected increases in the government appropriations for the fighting forces.

Commons reconvened after the Easter recess last week, and promptly spotted a $100,000,000 grant to Nazi Storm Troopers in the German budget.

"Your Government," announced Sir John Simon, "are giving very serious consideration to Germany's contemplated increased expenditures on her army, navy and air forces. I have instructed our Ambassador to Berlin to make inquiries."

An opportunity to cut defense expenses and add still another $1,000,000 to Britain's surplus was finally lost last week to the MacDonald Government. Two years ago one of the richest and strangest of all British subjects, Dame Fanny Lucy Houston, offered to give -L-200,000 of her own money to strengthen Britain's Army & Navy. After much deliberation it was refused. Later she changed this offer, to give the same amount of money for a special air defense for London. Refused a second time, persistent Lady Houston renewed the offer. Last week, still ignored, she withdrew it.

Because eccentric Lady Houston cherishes Britain's aviators, she gave -L-100,000 in 1931 which enabled Britain to enter and win the final Schneider Trophy Races. Because she loathes and despises Prime Minister James Rarmsay MacDonald she keeps on her elaborate steam yacht The Liberty, once the property of the not quite so eccentric Joseph Pulitzer, an elaborate electric sign to blaze across the harbors of Britain: DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR! Only with the greatest of difficulty could the manager of her paper, the famed Saturday Review, persuade her to withdraw the most libelous portions of a personal attack she had written on Prime Minister MacDonald. Last week Lady Houston topped her withdrawn offer with a characteristic wire to her old enemy the Prime Minister:

"I alone have dared to point out the dire need for air defense of London. You have muzzled others who have deplored this shameful neglect. You have treated my patriotic gesture with a contempt such as no other government would have been guilty of toward a patriot."

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