f the
war debt represents the gains of those who "have turned a national
emergency to personal profit." Some people whose incomes have been
actually decreased by the war, especially when currency depreciation
is taken into account, have, in response to the appeals of the
War Savings Committee, saved more than they ever saved before by
patriotically stinting themselves. And even the savers who have saved
out of war profits were so far more patriotic than the war profiteers
who did not save but squandered. In all the discussion concerning
the Levy on Capital I have not seen any answer (even in Mr Pethick
Lawrence's very persuasive little book in its favour) to the three
great objections to it (1) that it lets off the squanderer and
penalises the saver; (2) that the difficulty, trouble and expense
involved by the necessary valuation, and the iniquities and frauds
that are almost certain to arise out of it, will be enormous; and
(3) that its economic effect may be very serious in discouraging
accumulation. "Why should any one save," the unthrifty soul will most
naturally ask, "if his savings are liable to have a slice cut out of
them by a levy at any time?" The advocates of the Levy, and "Ex-M.P."
in his advocacy of a Compulsory Loan for repayment of debt; assume
that it can be done once and for all and never again. "Take one-fifth
of a man's savings away as an emergency measure not to be repeated,
and he will at once endeavour to save it back again." But how will you
persuade him that it is an emergency measure not to be repeated? How
can you be sure that it is so? I have heard a very distinguished
Socialist, discussing in private the beauties of the Levy on Capital,
point out that it is the sort of thing which, when once the ice has
been broken, can be done again so easily. From the Socialist point of
view the Levy on Capital is, of course, a simple means of getting, by
repetitions of it at regular intervals, all the means of production
into the hands of the State; but would the State make a good use of
them?

Another assumption about the Levy on Capital that seems to me to be
the merest will o' the wisp is the delusion that the whole saving that
it would entail by reducing the debt charge would necessarily and
certainly go to the relief of income tax. On this assumption Mr
Pethick Lawrence bases his most persuasive appeal to the smaller
income-tax payer, by showing that he would be better off after a Levy
on Capital th