These figures are averages taken over the whole period from the outbreak of the war, but at the outbreak of the war, after the initial expenditure on mobilization had been incurred, the daily expenditure was considerably below the average, as many charges had not yet matured. The expenditure has risen steadily and is now well over the daily average that I have given. To that figure must be added, in order to give a complete account of the matter, something for war services other than naval or military. At the beginning of the year these charges are not likely to be very considerable, but it will probably be within the mark to say that from April I we shall be spending over £1,700,000 a day above the normal, in consequence of the war.
Perhaps now I may say something which is not strictly in order on this vote, but concerns the vote of credit for the ensuing year, which amounts, as appears on the paper, to £250,000,000. The committee will at once observe an obvious distinction between the votes of credit taken for the current financial year and that which we propose to take for the ensuing year. As I have already pointed out, at the outbreak of war the ordinary supply of the year had been granted by the House, and accordingly the votes of credit for 1914-1915 were for the amounts required beyond the ordinary grants of Parliament for the cost of military and naval operations. When we came to frame the estimates for the ensuing year, 1915-1916, the Treasury was confronted with the difficulty, which amounted to an impossibility, of presenting to Parliament estimates in the customary form for navy and army expenditure, apart from the cost of the war. All the material circumstances have been set out in the Treasury minute of Feb. 5, and in principle have been approved by the House. As the committee will remember, the total of the estimates which we have presented for the army and the navy amount to only £15,000 for the army and £17,000 for the navy, and the remainder of the cost of both these services will be provided for out of votes of credit, and the vote of credit now being proposed provides for general army and navy service in as far as specific provision is not made for them in the small estimates already presented. This vote of credit, therefore, has two features which I believe are quite unique, and without precedent. In the first place, it is the largest single vote on record in the annals of this House, and, secondly, as I have said, it provides for the ordinary as well as for the emergency expenditure of the army and the navy. The House may ask on what principle or basis has this sum of £250,000,000 been arrived at. Of course it is difficult, and indeed impossible, to give any exact estimate, but as regards the period, so far as we can forecast it, for which this vote is being taken, it has been thought advisable to take a sum sufficient, so far as we can judge, to provide for all the expenditure which will come in course of payment up to approximately the second week in July—that is to say, a little over three months, or something like 100 days of war expenditure.
As regards the daily rate of expenditure—I have dealt hitherto with the expenditure up to March 31—the War Office calculates that from the beginning of April, 1915, the total expenditure on army services will be at the rate of £1,500,000 per day, with a tendency to increase. The total expenditure on the navy at the commencement of April will, it is calculated, amount to about £400,000 per day. The aggregate expenditure on the army and the navy services at the beginning of 1915-1916 is therefore £1,900,000 per day, with a tendency to increase, and for the purpose of our estimate the figure we have taken is a level £2,000,000 a day. On a peace footing the daily expenditure upon the army and the navy on the basis of the estimates approved last year was about £220,000 per day. So that the difference between £2,000,000 and £220,000 represents what we estimate to be the increased expenditure due to the war during the 100 days for which we are now providing.
There are other items belonging to the same category as those to which I have already referred in dealing with the supplementary vote with regard to advances to our own dominions and other States for which provision has also had to be made, and the balance of the total of £250,000,000 for which we are now asking, beyond the actual estimated expenditure for the army and the navy, will be applied to those and kindred or emergency purposes. Before I pass from the purely monetary aspect of the matter, it may be interesting to the committee to be reminded of what has been our expenditure upon the great wars of the past. In the great war which lasted for over twenty years, from 1793 to 1815, the total cost as estimated by the best authorities was £831,000,000. The Crimean war may be put down, taking everything into account, at £70,000,000. The total cost of the war charges in South Africa from 1899 to March 31, 1903, was estimated in a return presented to Parliament at £211,000,000. In presenting these two votes of credit the Government are making a large pecuniary demand on the House, a demand which in itself and beyond comparison is larger than has ever been made in the House of Commons by any British Minister in the whole course of our history.
We make it with the full conviction that after seven months of war the country and the whole empire are every whit as determined as they were at the outset [cheers] if need be at the cost of all we can command both in men and in money to bring a righteous cause to a triumphant issue. [Cheers.] There is much to encourage and to stimulate us in what we see. Nothing has shaken and nothing can shake our faith in the unbroken spirit of Belgium, [cheers,] in the undefeated heroism of indomitable Serbia, in the tenacity and resource with which our two great allies, one in the west and the other in the east, hold their far-flung lines and will continue to hold them till the hour comes for an irresistible advance. [Cheers.] Our own dominions and our great dependency of India have sent us splendid contributions of men, a large number of whom already are at the front, and before very long, in one or another of the actual theatres of war, the whole of them will be in the fighting line. [Cheers.] We hear today with great gratification that the Princess Patricia's Canadian regiment has been doing, during these last few days, most gallant and efficient service. [Cheers.]
We have no reason to be otherwise than satisfied with the progress of recruiting here at home. [Cheers.] The territorial divisions now fully trained are capable—I say it advisedly—of confronting any troops in the world, [cheers,] and the new armies, which have lately been under the critical scrutiny of skilled observers, are fast realizing all our most sanguine hopes. A war carried on upon this gigantic scale and under conditions for which there is no example in history is not always or every day a picturesque or spectacular affair. Its operations are of necessity in appearance slow and dragging. Without entering into strategic details, I can assure the committee that with all the knowledge and experience which we have now gained, his Majesty's Government have never been more confident than they are today in the power as well as the will of the Allies to achieve ultimate and durable victory. [Cheers.] I will not enter in further detail to what I may call the general military situation, but I should like to call the attention of the committee for a few moments to one or two aspects of the war which of late have come prominently into view.
I will refer first to the operations which are now in progress in the Dardanelles. [Cheers.] It is a good rule in war to concentrate your forces on the main theatre and not to dissipate them in disconnected and sporadic adventures, however promising they may appear to be. That consideration, I need hardly say, has not been lost sight of in the councils of the Allies. There has been and there will be no denudation or impairment of the forces which are at work in Flanders, and both the French and ourselves will continue to give them the fullest, and we believe the most effective, support. Nor, what is equally important, has there for the purpose of these operations been any weakening of the grand fleet. [Cheers.] The enterprise which is now going on, and so far has gone on in a manner which reflects, as I think the House will agree, the highest credit on all concerned, was carefully considered and conceived with very distinct and definite objects—political, strategic, and economical. Some of these objects are so obvious as not to need statement and others are of such a character that it is perhaps better for the moment not to state them. [Laughter and cheers.] But I should like to advert for a moment, without any attempt to forecast the future, to two features in this matter. The first is, that it once more indicates and illustrates the close co-operation of the Allies—in this case the French and ourselves—in the new theatre and under somewhat dissimilar conditions to those which have hitherto prevailed, and to acknowledge what I am sure the House of Commons will be most ready to acknowledge, that the splendid contingent from the French Navy that our allies have supplied [cheers] is sharing to the full both the hazards and the glory of the enterprise. [Cheers.] The other point on which I think it is worth while to dwell for a moment is that this operation shows in a very significant way the copiousness and the variety of our naval resources. [Cheers.] In order to illustrate that remark, take the names of the ships which have actually been mentioned in the published dispatches. The Queen Elizabeth, [cheers,] the first ship to be commissioned of the newest type of what are called superdreadnoughts, with guns of power and range never hitherto known in naval warfare. [Cheers.] Side by side with her is the Agamemnon, the immediate predecessor of the dreadnought, and in association with them the Triumph, the Cornwallis, the Irresistible, the Vengeance, and the Albion—representing, I think I am right in saying, three or four different types of the older predreadnought battleship which have been so foolishly and so prematurely regarded in some quarters as obsolete or negligible—all bringing to bear the power of their formidable twelve-inch guns on the fortifications, with magnificent accuracy and with deadly effects. [Cheers.] When, as I have said, these proceedings are being conducted, so far as the navy is concerned, without subtraction of any sort or kind from the strength and effectiveness of the grand fleet, I think a word of congratulation is due to the Admiralty for the way in which it has utilized all its resources. [Cheers.]
I pass from that to another new factor in these military and naval operations—the so-called German "blockade" of our coasts. [Cheers.] I shall have to use some very plain language. [Cheers.] I may, perhaps, preface what I have to say by the observation that it does not come upon us as a surprise. [Cheers.] This war began on the part of Germany with the cynical repudiation [cheers] of a solemn treaty on the avowed grounds that when a nation's interests required it, right and good faith must give way to force. ["Hear, hear!">[ The war has been carried on, therefore, with a systematic—not an impulsive or a casual—but a systematic violation of all the conventions and practices by which international agreements had sought to mitigate and to regularize the clash of arms. [Cheers.] She has now, I will not say reached a climax, for we do not know what may yet be to come, but she has taken a further step without any precedent in history by mobilizing and organizing not upon the surface but under the surface of the sea a campaign of piracy and pillage. [Prolonged cheers.]
Are we—can we—here I address myself to the neutral countries of the world—are we to or can we sit quiet as though we were still under the protection of the restraining rules and the humanizing usages of civilized warfare? [Cheers.] We think we cannot. [Cheers.] The enemy, borrowing what I may, perhaps, for this purpose call a neutral flag from the vocabulary of diplomacy, describe these newly adopted measures by a grotesque and puerile perversion of language as a "blockade." [Laughter.] What is a blockade? A blockade consists in sealing up the war ports of a belligerent against sea-borne traffic by encircling their coasts with an impenetrable ring of ships of war. [Cheers.]
Where are these ships of war? [Cheers.] Where is the German Navy? [Cheers.] What has become of those gigantic battleships and cruisers on which so many millions of money have been spent and in which such vast hopes and ambitions have been invested? I think, if my memory serves me, they have only twice during the course of these seven months been seen upon the open sea. Their object in both cases was the same—murder, [cheers,] civilian outrage, and wholesale destruction of property in undefended seaside towns, and on each occasion when they caught sight of the approach of a British force they showed a clean pair of heels, and they hurried back at the top of their speed to the safe seclusion of their mine fields and their closely guarded forts.