make the total yearly expenditure for the first year of
peace $1,690,000,000. Deducting this from the existing taxation you get
a surplus of $855,000,000. Thus after withdrawing the $430,000,000
received from the excess profits tax there still remains a margin of
$425,000,000."

Indeed, to analyze British war finance to-day is to find something
besides debits and credits and balances. It is a great moral force that
does not reckon in terms of pounds or pence. There is no thought of
indemnity to soothe the scars of waste: no dream of conquest to atone
for friendly land despoiled.

Money grubbing has gone, if only for the moment, along with the other
baser things that have evaporated in the giant melting pot of the war.
In England to-day there are only two things, Work and Fight. They are
giving the nation an economic rebirth: a new idea of the dignity of
toil: they have begot a spirit of denial that is rearing an impregnable
rampart of resource.

Even more marvellous is the financial devotion of the French who present
a spectacle of unselfish sacrifice that merely to touch, as alien, is to
have a thrilling and unforgettable experience.

When you look into the French method of paying for the war you get the
really picturesque and human interest details. In place of taxation you
find that the war is being paid, in the main, out of the savings of the
people. Instead of mortgaging the future, the Gaul is utilising his
thrifty past.

Never in all history is there a more impressive or inspiring
demonstration of the value of thrift as a national asset. It has reared
the bulwark that will enable France to withstand whatever economic
attack the war will make.

The difference between the English and French system of war financing
is psychological as well as material. The average Frenchman has a great
deal of the peasant in him. He is willing to give his life and his
honour to the nation but he absolutely draws the line at paying taxes.
This is why the French have made it a war of loans.

Go up and down the battle line in France and you get startling evidence
of the French devotion to savings. More than one English officer has
told me of tearful requests from French peasants for permission to go
back to their steel-swept and war-torn little farms to dig up the few
hundreds of francs buried in some corner of field or garden. Equally
impressive is the sight of farmers--usually old men and women--working
in the fields while s