Here, however, in England, we have a financial prestige which is based upon financial leadership of more than a century.  We have also raised a large part of the money we have used for the prosecution of the war by borrowing abroad, and so we have to be specially careful in husbanding that credit, which is so strong a weapon on the side of liberty and justice.  And, further, we have a public which thinks for itself, and will be highly sceptical, and is already inclined to be sceptical, concerning the manner in which the Government may treat the national creditors.  Its tendency to think for itself in matters of finance is accompanied by very gross ignorance, which very often induces it to think quite wrongly; and when we find it necessary for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make it clear at a succession of public meetings that those who subscribe to War Loans need have no fear that their property in them will be treated worse than any other kinds of property, we see what evil results the process of too much borrowing and too little taxation can have in a community which is acutely suspicious and distrustful of its Government, and very liable to ignorant blundering on financial subjects.

What, then, might have been done if, at the beginning of the war, a really courageous Government, with some power of foreseeing the needs of finance for several years ahead if the war lasted, had made a right appeal to a people which was at that time ready to do all that was asked from it for the cause of justice against the common foe?  The problem by which the Government was faced was this, that it had to acquire for the war an enormous and growing amount of goods and services required by our fighting forces, some of which could only be got from abroad, and some could only be produced at home, while at the same time it had to maintain the civilian population with such a supply of the necessaries of life as would maintain them in efficiency for doing the work at home which was required to support the effort of our fighters at the Front.  With regard to the goods which came from abroad, either for war purposes or for the maintenance of the civilian population, the Government obviously had no choice about the manner in which payment had to be made.  It had no power to tax the suppliers in foreign countries of the goods and services that we needed during the war period.  It consequently could only induce them to supply these goods and services by selling them either commodities produced by our own industry, or securities held by our capitalists, or its own promises to pay.