Sixty-Eight Millions in Twelve Weeks

The national expenditure last week was £8,310,115, bringing the total since the end of March to £174, 611,468 as against £102,670,518 in the corresponding period of last year. In the second week of September the expenditure was £7,261,000, in the third week nearly £10,000,000, and in the fourth week about £15,000,000. In the first full week of October the total had risen to £20,300,000, but in the second week it dropped to £12,196,352. Now there is a further decline of nearly £4,000,000, making the expenditure less than half of what, through exceptional circumstances, it was  in a recent week. The expenditure to date exceeds the income by nearly £86,000,000, but compared with last year’s expenditure – which is the real criterion – the increase becomes a little under £72,000,000. The fall in the receipts has only been £3,646,831, which may be regarded as very remarkable. The cost of the war up to last week, including money which may have been expended on the national sugar supply and some other large items which rose out of the war, may be roughly estimated at about £68,000,000 for a period of a little under twelve weeks.

Banbury Guardian, November 1914