ith a burden of debt which is appalling to
consider, and that in any case, whether the war lasts another six
months or another six years, a reform of our financial methods is long
overdue, is inevitable some time, and will pay us better the sooner it
is set about.

IV

WAR FINANCE AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN--II

_December_, 1917

The Changed Spirit of the Country--A Great Opportunity thrown
away--What Taxation might have done--The Perils of Inflation--Drifting
stupidly along the Line of Least Resistance--It is we who pay, not
"Posterity."

In the November number of _Sperling's Journal_ I dealt with the
question of how our war finance might have been improved if a longer
view had been taken from the beginning concerning the length of the
war and the measures that would be necessary for raising the money.
The subject was too big to be fully covered in the course of one
article, and I have been given this opportunity of continuing its
examination. Before doing so I wish to remind my readers once more
of the great difference in the spirit of the country with regard to
financial self-sacrifice in the early days of the war and at the
present time, after three years of high profits, public and private
extravagance, and successful demands for higher wages have demoralised
the public temper into a belief that war is a time for making big
profits and earning big wages at the expense of the community. In the
early days the spirit of the country was very different, and it might
have remained so if it had been trained by the use made of public
finance along the right line. In the early days the Labour leaders
announced that there were to be no strikes during the war, and the
property-owning classes, with their hearts full of gratitude for the
promptitude with which Mr Lloyd George had met the early war crisis,
were ready to do anything that the country asked from them in the
matter of monetary sacrifice. Mr Asquith's grandiloquent phrase, "No
price is too high when Honour is at stake," might then have been taken
literally by all classes of the community as a call to them to do
their financial duty. Now it has been largely translated into a belief
that no price is too high to exact from the Government by those
who have goods to sell to it, or work to place at its disposal. In
considering what might have been in matters of finance we have to be
very careful to remember this evil change which has taken place in the
public sp