face us at the end of the war? As it is, the nation, with all classes
embittered owing to suspicions of profiteering on the part of the
employers and of unpatriotic strikes on the part of the workers, will
have to face a load of debt, the service of which is already roughly
equivalent to our total pre-war revenue; while there seems every
prospect that the war may continue for many half-years yet, and every
half-year, as it is at present financed, leaves us with a load of debt
which will require the total yield of the income tax and the super-tax
before the war to meet the charge upon it. Why have we allowed our
present finance to go so wrong? In the first place, perhaps, we may
put the bad example of Germany. Then, surely, our rulers might have
known better than to have been deluded by such an example. In the
second place, it was the cowardice of the politicians, who had not the
sense in the early days of the war to see how eager the spirit of the
country was to do all that the war required of it, and consequently
were afraid to tax at a time when higher taxation would have been
submitted to most cheerfully by the country. There was also the absurd
weakness of our Finance Ministers and our leading financial officials,
which allowed our financial machinery to be so much weakened by the
demands of the War Office for enlistment that it has been said in the
House of Commons by several Chancellors of the Exchequer that it is
quite impossible to consider any form of new taxation because
the machinery could not undertake it. There has also been great
short-sightedness on the part of the business men of the country, who
have failed to give the Government a lead in this important matter.
Like the Government, they have taken short views, always hoping that
the war might soon be over, and so have left the country with a
problem that grows steadily more serious with each half-year as we
drift stupidly along the line of least resistance.