HALF TO FIGHT: HALF TO PAY

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2725, 21 March 1916, Page 9

HALF TO FIGHT: HALF TO PAY

Mr. Herbert N. Casson, speaking in liondon, said half of us must fight, and | tho rest must pay. Next year the taxgatherers would come five at a time, | and some of us would be saying to Mr. M'Kenna, "Take the business and leave me the taxes." , We had the lowest pauperism rate since pauperism was invented. We always used to have a million who could do nothing but eat. Half of them wero now making shells. Our army of 276,000 became 4,000,000 in 6uch quick time that we could not count the men as they oime in. Four | million soldiers meant one soldier for overy acre in Yorkshire, one for every I two houses in Great Britain, and 33 for every square mile of this island. Wo had now an army which, marching four abreast, would be 700 miles long. Let every man carry 503 sovereigns, and there we had, tho army and the cost, an army which would reach from Land's End to John o' Groats. Wo could stand our army round the ccast line, elbows touching, and with every man bearing his own weight of silver, wo had the cost. No one could realise this war. If Julius Caesar saw this war— a war coating £10,000 a minute—he would die of fright. If Napoleon saw it lie would want to get out of the business and keep a cigar shop. If he oaw 40,000 shells an hour being fired, lie would die of amazement. The great battles of history were only riots. What went bofore this war was all preliminary. All the real history had been made in'the last year and 'a half.