l levy was made
in Germany, but the percentage of that levy was so small as
to actually amount to no more than an additional income tax,
and that at a time when the regular income tax in Germany was
very moderate as measured by the present standards of income
taxation.

Only a trifling fraction of a man's property is held in cash. If they
conscript a certain percentage of his possessions in stocks and bonds,
what would the Government do with them?

Keep them? That would not answer its purpose, because the Government
wants cash, not securities.

Sell them? Who is to buy them when everyone's funds are depleted?

If they conscript a certain percentage of a man's real estate or mine
or farm or factory, how is that to be expressed and converted into
cash?

Are conscripted assets to be used as a basis for the issue of Federal
Reserve Bank Notes? That would mean gross inflation with all its
attendant evils, dangers and deceptions.

Would they repudiate a percentage of the National Debt? Repudiation is
no less dishonourable in a people than in an individual, and the
penalty for failure to respect the sanctity of obligations is no
different for a nation than for an individual.

The fact is that the Government would gain nothing in the process of
capital conscription and the country would be thrown into chaos for
the time being. The man who has saved would be penalized; he who has
wasted would be favoured. Thrift and constructive effort, resulting in
the needful and fructifying accumulation of capital, would be arrested
and lastingly discouraged.

I can understand the crude notion of the man who would divide all
possessions equally. There would be mighty little coming to anyone by
such distribution and it is, of course, an utterly impossible thing
to do, but it is an understandable notion. But by the confiscation of
capital for Government use neither the Government nor any individual
would be benefited.

A vigorously progressive income tax is both economically and socially
sound. A capital tax is wholly unsound and economically destructive.
It may nevertheless become necessary in the case of some of the
belligerent countries to resort to this expedient, but I can conceive
of no situation likely to arise which would make it necessary or
advisable in this country. More than ever would such a tax be harmful
in times of war and post-bellum reconstruction, when beyond almost all
other things it is esse