"
When I asked him to make this more specific, he continued:
"The total revenue for the current year is $2,545,000,000. Our last
Peace Budget was $1,000,000,000. Assuming that the war would end by next
March 1st, you must add another $590,000,000 for interest and sinking
fund on the war debt together with a further $100,000,000 for pensions
which would 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.
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