peace time to a certain extent, though the revenue then collected is
so small an item in the total national income that it counts for much
less than in war, when the power that the Government can wield by
its policy in taxation and borrowing might have been all-powerful in
keeping the nation on the right lines in the matter of spending and
keeping down the cost of the war, and in maintaining our financial
staying power to a far greater extent than has actually been done.

It is easy, as they say on the Stock Exchange, to job backwards, and
it is also easy, and perhaps rather unprofitable, to hazard opinions
about what would have happened if things had been otherwise.
Nevertheless, when we look back on the spirit of the country as it was
in those early days of the war, when the violation of Belgium had sent
a chivalrous thrill through the hearts of all classes in the country,
when we all recognised that we were faced with the greatest crisis
in our history, that our country and the future of civilisation were
about to be tested by the severest strain ever applied to them, that
the life and fortune of the individual did not count, but that the
war and victory were the only interests that any one had a right to
consider--when one remembers all these things, and the use that a wise
financial policy might have made of them, it is impossible to avoid
the conclusion that the history of the war in this country and its
social and political effects might have been something much finer,
much cleaner and more noble if only the weapons of finance had been
more boldly and wisely used. It is not a good thing to indulge in
high-falutin' on this subject. It is absurd to suppose that the war
suddenly turned us all into plaster saints at the beginning, and that
we might have continued so to the end if the State had dealt with our
money in a proper way. But without setting up any such idealistic
arguments as these, looking back on those early days of the war, one