172 THE BRITISH APPROACH TO POLITICS

unexpected surplus may, besides paying interest, add to the

Sinking Fund which the National Debt Commissioners control;

but there is no prospect of any substantial reduction in the

total for very many years. Increase of armaments will add

another £400,000,000 and should Great Britain again enter a

war the total would become so great that it would scarcely be

possible to pay the annual interest. The plan of a Capital Levy,

i.e., a special charge on people owning great wealth, to be used

for debt repayment, was considered but rejected shortly after

the last war. Finally, there is about £1,000,000,000 External

Debt,.owed to foreign countries, chiefly the U.S.A.; but in 1934

the Government decided to make no further payments on this

account. The money, as Mr. Neville Chamberlain, then

Chancellor of the Exchequer, explained, had been spent on

materials long since destroyed in the War. This argument would

apply equally to much of the Internal Debt, and the U.S.

Government has never felt satisfied. Britain, however, was not

being paid by her own .jdebtors, and could not, therefore, be

reasonably expected to pay the U.S.A. International Debts,

however, only add one more complication to the economic

difficulties of a world already troubled by all manner of

restrictions on the normal course of trade, and no final agreement

is likely to be reached except as part of a world programme of

economic recovery.

Great as the Debt is, the interest is at present unfailingly paid,
and those whose savings are in Government Stock feel that
they have the safest possible investment. What assets has the
Government to set against its Debt, and inspire this confidence?
Chiefly, the facts that it is a stable Government with the right
and the power to tax its subjects, and that those subjects
produce enough wealth to bear the burden. Moreover, the
examination of the economic and social activities of Government
has revealed types of expenditure which add to the nation's
wealth-producing power. As these activities grow, the Govern-
ment becomes comparable not only to an individual who receives