260 MEETING THE WAR BILL

with our aggregate income. Our foreign debt we
can only meet by shipping goods and rendering
services. But since it was all raised to be lent to our
Allies and our lending of it was essential to a victory
which has rid mankind of a terrible menace, it is
surely reasonable that our creditors should not press
for repayment in the first few difficult years, but
should fund our short-dated debts into loans with
twenty-five or thirty years to run. As to the home
debt, we can only lighten its burden on the taxpayer
by making taxation equitable. To this end reform
of the income tax is an urgent need. We have to
lighten its pressure much more effectively on those
who are bringing up families, and by collecting it
through employers make it an effective and just tax
on those of the working class whose earnings and
family liabilities make them fairly subject to it.