This much at least seems to be agreed by most reasonable people about the debt charge—­that it will have to be raised, either by a Levy on Capital or by income tax or some other form of direct taxation, from those who are blessed with a margin.  We are not likely to repeat our ancestors’ mistake, after the Napoleonic War, of throwing the whole burden on to the general consumer by indirect taxation of necessaries and of articles of general consumption.  Even Tariff “Reformers” say little about the revenue that their fiscal schemes would bring in.  And with good reason.  For in so far as they secured Protection they would bring in no revenue; we cannot at once keep out foreign goods and tax them; and any revenue that they brought in would be most expensively raised, because a large part of the extra price paid by the consumer would go not to the State but into the pockets of the home producer.  Nor is it likely that any of the many schemes—­of which Mr Stilwell’s “Great Plan, How to Pay for the War,” is a particularly bold example—­for paying off debt by a huge issue of inconvertible currency, will achieve any practical result.  Not only would they defraud the debt-holder by paying him off in currency enormously depreciated by the multiplication of it that would be involved; but they would also, by that depreciation, throw the burden of the debt on the shoulders of the general consumer through a further disastrous rise in prices, and so would accentuate the bitterness and discontent already rife owing to the war-time dearness and all the suspicions of profiteering and exploitation that it has engendered.

After all, this problem of the war debt, in so far as it is held at home, is not one that ought to terrify us if we look at it steadily.  People talk and write as if when the war is over the business of paying for it will begin.  That is not really so.  The war has been paid for as it went on, and, except in so far as it has been financed by borrowing abroad, it has been paid for by us as a nation.  Whatever we have used for the war we have paid for as it went on, partly with the help of loans from America and from other countries—­Argentina, Holland, Switzerland, etc.—­that have lent us money.  These loans amount, as far as they can be traced from the official figures, to about L1300 millions.  Against them we can set our loans to our Dominions, over L200 millions (a perfectly good asset), and our loans to our Allies, perhaps L1500 millions, which the Chancellor proposes to write down by 50 per cent., and might perhaps treat still more drastically.  To meet this foreign debt we shall have to turn out so much stuff—­goods and services of all kinds—­for sale abroad to meet the interest and repayment.  We have further impoverished ourselves by selling our foreign securities abroad No figure has been published giving any clue to the amount of these sales, and we may perhaps guess them at L1000 millions.  If the pre-war estimates of our overseas investments at L4000 millions were anywhere near the mark.  It thus appears that we shall end the war still a great creditor nation.