Yet there was an illusory quality to Britannia's victorious peace. True the empire had never been so big. But nor had the costs of victory, by comparison with which the economic value of these new territories was negligible, if not negative. No combatant power spent as much on the war as Britain, who's total expenditure amounted to just under £10 billion.
The creeping crisis of confidence in Empire had its roots in the crippling price Britain had paid for its victory over Germany in WW1. The death toll for the British Isles alone was around 3/4 of a million, one in sixteen of all male adults between fifteen and fify. The economic cost was harder to calculate.....
..... One reason for this was the creation of huge new debts as a result of the war: not just the German reparation debt, but also the whole complex of debts the victorious allies owed one another.
...... The irony was that even as the empire grew more economically important, its defence sank inexorably down the list of political priorities. Under pressure from voters to honour wartime pledges to build 'homes fit for heroes', not to mention hospitals and high schools, British politicians first neglected and then simply forgot about imperial defence. In the ten years to 1932 the defence budget was cut by more than a third - at a time when French and Italian spending rose by 60 and 55 percent.
Every year until 1932 'the ten-year rule' was renewed and every year new spending was put off. The rationale was straightforward: It was impossible for us to contemplate a simultaneous was against Japan and Germany; we simply cannot afford the expenditure involved.... between 1928 and 1940 was to postpone a war - not look ahead.
In 1918 Britain had won the war on the western front by a huge feat of military modernization. In the 1920s nearly everything that had been learned was forgotten in the name of economy. War had acted as a forcing house for a host of new military techs - the tank, submarine and the armed aeroplane. To secure its post war future, the empire needed to invest in all of these. It did nothing of the kind
Bookmarks