ده
2
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"One of the meates to defend the pound which the United Kingdom.
.Government must take to reduce the amount of ac..ey Britain spends
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abroad, including the mount spent on aid and on d fence. Indeed, it 13
the size of these expenditures abroad in the past :hich has been largel♪
responsible for getting the pound into difficultie....
"Now the garrison here, when at its present strength of 6 2/3 maj r.
Aray units a major unit means a battalion of inf、atry, a regiment of
artillery or any other military formation of that :ize
Naval and Royal Air Force elements, costs the Unit, 1 Kingdom about £16 1.
a year in all to maintain.
•
plus the Royal
"Not all of these costs, however, adversely ffect the strength •:
the pound, Her Majesty's Government calculated tha some two-thirds of
น
this sum could be regarded as expenditure arising verseas and asked us
in July this year if we could afford to pay this aunt, plus the cost of
local capital works necessary to the garrison, as our contribution towards
the cost of our defence.
"It was at this point that I arrived in London on leave. I naturally
pointed out at once that, in view of our own econòmic difficulties and
the obvious need for improvements in our own social services, we would be
quite unable to pay so much. The proposal was therefore reviewed, and we
were then asked to pay a somewhat smaller, but still very substantial,
proportion of these costs. Again, I told the Secretary of State, who was
most sympathetic, that even this amount was much more than we could afford.
"The next thing was that Mr. Lee came out to visit us last August.
He was able to see for himself all that we are trying to do here, and how
much remains to be done; and, as a result of his visit and the discussions
She
She had here, he was able to appreciate that the demands so far made upon us
were indeed beyond our means.
were