and everybody had the same chance of saving, in relation to their wealth, then it would be fair enough that we should all be taxed in relation to our wealth to pay interest to those who had made the patriotic effort when it was called for. But things do not happen so. In war time, the best of us, in strength and courage and endurance and manliness, are risking death and wounds in scenes of indescribable dirt and discomfort and strain, and are doing this for very low pay compared with the salaries and wages earned by those who, not being fit to fight, are left at home. And so the opportunity for subscribing to War Loans is much less for those who, because of the work they are doing at the front, have more right than anybody else to be enriched by the war. When they come back to civil life they find that a war debt, to which they had little chance of subscribing, lays on them a burden of taxation at a time when they have more than enough difficulty in fitting themselves into industrial and professional work.
Number three—borrowing abroad—is a costly and difficult method, because a nation at war naturally has to pay a high rate on loans that it issues in foreign countries, the citizens of which take a detached view of its chance of
