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 L15,000 for the army and L17,000 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 L250,000,000 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 L1,500,000 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 L400,000 per day.  The aggregate expenditure on the army and the navy services at the beginning of 1915-1916 is therefore L1,900,000 per day, with a tendency to increase, and for the purpose of our estimate the figure we have taken is a level L2,000,000 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 L220,000 per day.  So that the difference between L2,000,000 and L220,000 represents what we estimate to be the increased expenditure due to the war during the 100 days for which we are now providing.