e war is
over. Our country comes first."

This was the lead given to the country by those down at the bottom,
who had the least to lose, and whose patriotism during the course of
the war has frequently been questioned. At the top the financial and
property-owning classes, having been saved by Mr Lloyd George's able
adroitness from a bad crisis in the City, were entirely tame, and
would have suffered anything in the way of taxation or financial
conscription if the need for it had been properly put before them.

It is almost amusing to remember now that in those early days of the
war the shareholders in Home Railway companies were thought lucky. The
Government were taking the railways over, and were guaranteeing that
their proprietors should receive the same dividends as they had had
before the war. Such was the view in financial and property-owning
circles of results of war that, so far from any expectation of the
huge profits which war has put into the pockets of certain classes,
they were only too thankful if they could be assured that their gross
incomes were not going to be reduced.

Such was the spirit with which the Government of that day had to
deal. A spirit in all classes earnestly patriotic, and so thoroughly
frightened of the economic consequences of the war that it would have
been ready to face any sacrifices that the Government had asked of it.
How, then, would the Government have dealt with this spirit if it had
taken the trouble really to think out the problem of war finance on
a long view instead of proceeding along a haphazard line, adjusting
peace methods to war without any consideration as to their adequacy?
If the problem had been really thought out beforehand the Government
must have seen clearly that the real economic problem in war-time is
not merely a question of raising money, since that can at any time
be done easily by means of a printing-press, but of diverting the
industrial energy of the nation from peace to war purposes, that is
to say, transferring from the enjoyment of the individual citizen
the goods and services that used to contribute to his comfort and
amusement, and turning them over to the provision of the things needed
for the war. War's needs can only be met out of the current production
of the world as it is at present. All the warring powers begin a
war with certain accumulated war stores consisting of battleships,
ammunition, guns and all other forms of war material. Apart f