War-time financial problems

46 WAR FINANCE AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

redemption of debt. But, in fact, it is well known
that by no means all that the Government has
borrowed for war purposes has been provided in this
way. Much of the money that the Government has
obtained for war purposes has been got not out of
genuine savings of investors, but by arrangements ,
pf various kinds with the banking machinery of the
country, or by the simple use of the printing-press,
with the result that the Government has provided
itself with an enormous mass of new currency which
has not been taken out of anybody else's pocket, but
has been manufactured by or for the Government.

The consequence of the profligate use of this
dishonest process is that general rise in prices, which
is in effect an indirect tax on the necessaries of life,
involving all the injustice and ill-feeling which arises
from such a measure. It is inevitable that the
working classes, finding themselves subjected to a
rise in prices, the cause of which they do not under-
stand, but the result of which they see to be a great
decrease in the buying power of their wages, should
believe that they are being exploited by profiteers,
that the rich classes are growing richer at their
expense out of the war, and that they and the
country are being bled by a set of unpatriotic
capitalist blood-suckers. It is also natural that the
property-owning classes, who find themselves paying
an Income Tax which they regard as extortionate,
should consider that the working classes by their
continuous demands for higher wages to meet higher
cost of living, are trying to exploit the country in
their own interests in a time of national crisis, and