Excerpt from How to Pay for the War: Being Ideas Offered to the Chancellor of the Exchequer by the Fabian Research Department
To many people the title of this book will suggest a consideration of how to raise money to carry on the war. That immediate problem of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not the one here dealt with. Hard though it may be at the moment to believe it, this war, like others, will presently come somehow to an end ; and the various States will then have the task of "paying the bill." The following pages contain some suggestions - not a complete programme - as to how, in the United Kingdom, the financial burden may be borne.
When the war is concluded our financial difficulties will, in a sense, begin. A National Debt of three or four thousand million pounds will have to be dealt with, in addition to the new charges for war pensions, and, unfortunately, also increased provision for defensive armaments. Even when Peace is concluded, it will be long before the daily Government expenditure can be reduced to the sum to which we must accustom ourselves as the future normal. It is, to say the least, unlikely that we can secure, against the outbreak of another great war, any guarantee on which it would be prudent to rely. Nothing would be more dangerous than for the nation to be caught by such a war whilst still hampered by so large a public debt. For the same reasons that will compel us to maintain in efficiency a powerful navy, an equally effective "air fleet" and at least the framework of a continental army, we must at once arrange to repay to the investors a considerable portion of the millions that we shall have borrowed.
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