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.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге How to Pay for the War (Sidney Webb)