TO WIN THE WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 January 1916, Page 12

TO WIN THE WAR.

WHOSE LAST FARTHING? QUESTION OF NATIONAL SACRIFICE. ECONOMY BY DRASTIC TAXATION. [lt is wittily pointed out by the New Statesman that "when we applauded the Prime Minister's assertion that, in order to bring the wiv to a successful conclusion, the nation was prepared to sacrifice the last man and the last farthing, we did not mean our own last farthing—we did not mean even as much as the first half of our income!"] "Throughout the past week we have been feeling the reverberations of the bomb that Mr. Montagu dropped on the House of Commons when he pointedly said that if we were to be successful in keeping our armies in the field the nation would have, for the period of the war, to sacrifice at least half its aggregate income," says the New Statesman. "Indeed, if we may trust the official report, he put it even more strongly, so as to bring the unpalatable truth home to all his hearers. 'Every citizen,' said Mr. Montagu, 'ought, to be prepared to put at least one-half of his current income at the disposal of the State, cither in the form of tax or loan.'

WE SHALL BE MADE TO DO IT. "What has since been making people uncomfortable, in the city and elsewhere, is that it was not obscurely indicated that we should presently be made to do this. Why did not Mr. Montagu put the case in this irresistible way to the Chancellor of the Exchequer before the framing of the present inadequate Budget? "Mr. Montagu's analysis of the finincial position, ami the statistical inference that he drew, were in themselves icither new nor unexpected. But it is evident from the extent to which he lias set people thinking, and the horror uid alarm that the suggested sacrifice )f half our incomes has evoked, that we ire, as a nation, still far from realising vhat we are in for. OUR TOTAL INCOME. "The total aggregate income of the ommunity, our entire product for the vear, has never been put higher than £2,400,000,000, and it must now be considerably less. The Government is pending, this year, £1,590,000,000, and next year, if the war continues, it is expected to spend no less than £1,825,000,000—more than three-fourths of al 1 that the whole nation produces in its ) cars of maximum prosperity. "We can get some part of this vast mm from abroad in one form or another -in national loans! such as that just concluded in ttie United States, by the temporary borrowings abroad of banks tnd individuals obtaining goods on credit, by realising some of our American railway bonds and other foreign securities, and even, if things became very 'tight,' by selling to the wealthy American some more of the immense stores ol pictures and curiosities accumulated in our homes. 1200 MILLIONS TO BE FOUND. "But when 12 States are at war, on I -)f the 25 that share among them the whole of the Old World, nowhere does there exist much available wealth that we can borrow, except in the ' United States; and nowhere else in the world can we find purchasers either for our securities or for our pictures, to any appreciable extent. It is plain, even to those most optimistic with regard to foreign supplies, that at least £1,200, 000,000 must be found by the Government in.this country in the course o; the present year—and even more hexl year—and found without dela'y or postponement. OUR INCONVERTIBLE WEALTH.

"Nor is it of any use imagining, a\ we are apt to do, that the fact of oui accumulated property being 'worth,' as we fondly say, ten or fifteen thousand million pounds, enables us to escap from this foregoing of half our income.-: The Government has to have its five mil lion pounds each day in the form o' food and clothing for the millions of sc I diers and sailors; rifles and cannon ar, shells and aircraft, which hundreds t! thousands more must oe taken aw.iv from other work to make; and all tlr, countless kinds of stores needed in modem war. Our possessions in land and houses, railways and factories, mortgages and foreign securities, very comforting though they may be to the owners, are as inconvertible into what the Army needs to-day as the content.' of our bookshelvej.

NOT ENOUGH FOR BOTH.

"Everthing that is to be used or consumed has to be produced. There is wool in the world, and there is tailor labour, for khaki uniforms or for new clothes for civilians; but there is not enough for both. There is beef and wheat and sugar in the world, and ships and labour to transport them where they are to be eaten, for the millions of men with the colours or for the jpopulations for whom they are fightingbut not enough for both. There are mei and women available, either to make shells and nurse the wounded or to serve us as valets and parlour maids; but not for both purposes. There is no tcor.omic alchemy that can make the same food nourish more than one man, the same personal service- tend the soldiers in the fie id and the civilians at home, and same commodities serve both the nation as it lived in peace and the nation us it lives in war. "If we are to continue consuming five millions pounds' worth a day of commodities and services on the military and naval operations of ourselves and our allies we must necessarily take something like the same amount —not quite as much, for we normally reinvested ('saved') perhaps one million a day--off our daily consumption in civil life. CEASE TO SPEND HALF. "This is why Mr. Montagu wa3 telling only the plainest truth when he said that we must forego at least half our incomes—that is to say, wt- must, in the aggregate, cease to spend this proportion on our own living, and transfer it to the Government so that the Government may spend it. This i« why the utmost economy in consumption —not merely 'living within one's income,' but actually, whatever one's income, consuming as little as possible—is an imperative patriotic duty. "Unfortunately, as we one and all hasten to declare, we cannot stop uniformly half our expenditures, or forgo exactly half our incomes.

"Clearly, we must 'marshal' all the obligations and necessities of the nation in the order of their imperativeness, and arrange so that no family shall have to forego those that are really essential before all the less essential services have everywhere first been relinquished. This means, to put it shortly, nothing more [recondite than a properly graduated levy tin proportiun t« means,

"It is interesting to note that an income tax of what we call 10a in the pound—really meaning, on the new scale, one varying by easy stages from Cd in the pound on the smallest taxable income of £IOOO a year, and so rising, but still leaving the man with £IOO,OOO a year more than enough to keep his family in good health—would not yield more than two-thirds of the necessary sum. A compulsory loan would compel the same individual abnegation, and have the disadvantage of saddling the nation with the annual interest for ever. "If Mr. Montague was hinting at a 10s in the pound income tax, he was still understating the necessities of the ease. For even then there would still be left a considerable sum to be got by further economies in consumption—economies which, as all the experience of this war has shown, can only be secured by the most drastic measures of taxation. This, after all, is what National Service means—this, and not the forcible seizure of other persons to do the fighting that we are loth to sacrifice our own incomes for."