tax is to be collected when any piece of property changes hands, and the accruing sum is to be used for paying off the national debt, or a considerable portion of it at once.  The situation is completely changed from that which followed the Napoleonic wars, where war taxes fell largely upon labour.  So in self-preservation, capital is considering turning over a part of its property to the state to avoid the slow and disintegrating grind that otherwise inevitably must come.

A curious side light on the way in which democracy is conducting this war is found in the way by which it finances the war.  The great debt of the war, piled up mountain high, is of course, converted into bonds.  These bonds, similar to our Liberty Bonds, have been purchased not exclusively by the bankers as in former wars, but by the people of the middle class and of the labouring class.  Thus democracy has its savings in war bonds, which would be wiped out by an indemnity to Germany, but would be greatly inflated by an Allied victory; and where the treasure is, there the heart is!  Perhaps it was political strategy which placed the war bonds in the hands of the people.  But more than likely it was financial necessity.  For the tremendous financial burden of this war was too great for the investing classes to bear unaided.  So even the financing of the war has been more or less democratized.  In fact, the whole conduct of the war is democratized.

One of the corroborating proofs that this is after all not a king’s war, but a people’s war, is found in the kind of stories they were forever telling Henry and me about the war.  They are not hero stories.  Mostly they are funny stories, more or less gently guying the “pomp and circumstance of glorious war,” for it is the proud boast of the British army that this is a noncoms’ war.  Doubtless the stories have small basis in fact, but the currency of these blithe stories reflects the popular mind.  Thus they say that when General Haig and his staff came down to review the Canadian troops and pin a carload of hardware on their men for bravery in battle, medals of one sort and another, the Canadian General lined his huskies up, and as the staff approached he cried anxiously, “Say, boys—­here he comes.  Now see if you can’t stand to attention, and for Heaven’s sake, fellows, don’t call me Bill while he is here!” And then they say that after the heavy hardware and shelf goods were distributed a British officer lifted his voice to say:  “Men, you have written a brave page upon our history.  No more splendid courage than yours ever has been known in the annals of our proud race.  But with such magnificent courage, why can you not display other soldierly qualities.  Why are you so loose in your discipline?  Why don’t you treat your officers with more respect?” And in the pause a voice from the ranks replied, “They’re not a bad lot, sir.  We like ’em all right.  But we have ’em along for mascots!”

The French also seem to have their easy-going ways.  For current smoking room fiction relates that last spring after a troop of French soldiers had been hauled out to be shot for refusing to go into battle under orders, a whole division revolted and demanded new officers—­and got new officers—­before they would move forward.  And the same smoking room fiction says that in the revolt the men were right and the officers wrong.