Excerpt from Solvency or Downfall?: Squandermania and Its Story
The articles here reprinted were for the most part written with a single object. My purpose was to arouse both the nation and the Government to a perception of the economic calamities which must ensue if our public expenditure is not brought into closer relation with our diminished resources. A few articles which deal with Labour questions and with the unwise military adventures in Russia and the Middle East are also included. My original intention was to write a book which was to bear the title 'Solvency or Downfall?' and for this purpose I accumulated a considerable quantity of material. I abandoned the scheme of a special book, partly owing to business preoccupations which left me without the time required, and partly because I realised that the economic situation was changing so constantly that any book on the lines I had projected would soon be out of date. As an alternative I decided to reprint these articles, nearly all of which have appeared in one of my newspapers, the Sunday Pictorial. They form both a record and an indictment. Except for a few alterations and emendations, they appear here as first drafted, and where necessary the later figures are given in footnotes.
Some of the questions with which they deal have now been settled, but collectively the articles form a picture of a period to which the future historian will look back with amazement. I know of no precedent for the extraordinary prodigality with which our Government, at the close of a war unexampled in its dimensions and its cost, proceeded to scatter broadcast the remaining assets of the nation on a scale which would have been alarming even if we had suddenly been endowed with illimitable riches. The epidemic of bureaucratic Squandermania has not yet subsided. I think it must eventually end when the Government discover that the public cannot meet their enormous demands through sheer inability to find the money asked for.
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