ABSTRACT
WE have now examined the financial record of a specimen year, the last before the War, with the object of seeing how the figures of our National Finance are to be read. The War upset everything, Finance included, and the figures since 1913 are abnormal both in form and in substance. Instead of voting annually so much for the Army, the Navy, and the new Air Services, Parliament has passed huge Votes of Credit for War expenditure without a disclosure of details of the purposes for which the money was provided, and large sums have been borrowed in various forms, including the issue of Treasury notes greatly in excess of the gold reserve held for their redemption.
