true if a
similar or larger amount of debt is cancelled by means of an outright
Levy on Capital.

The merits and demerits of a Levy on Capital have already been dealt
with in the pages of this Journal "Ex-M.P.," however, brought forward
a slightly novel form of argument in its favour. He pointed out that
the money constituting the great increase in debt that has taken place
during the war will have been, in the main, contributed by people who
have worked at home under the protection of the Army and Navy, while
the soldiers and sailors have been prevented by the duty which sent
them out to risk their lives from subscribing a proportionate share to
the National Debt. Hence "a class that deserves most of the State will
find itself indebted to a class which--if it does not deserve least of
the State--has, at any rate, turned a national emergency to personal
profit." This is a strong argument, which, has been used frequently
in the course of the war in the pages of the _Economist_, against
borrowing for war purposes to the large extent to which our timid
rulers have adopted the policy. "To be really just," the writer
continued, "the process of taxation ... must be applied with greatest
force to those who have accumulated their money since the outbreak of
war, and only to a less degree to those whose fortunes have not been
built upon their country's necessity. The difficulty of separating
these two classes of wealth is great, and must, in the writer's
opinion, be effected by separate legislation--legislation which might
justly be based upon the increase in post-1913 incomes, a record of
which should now be in preparation at Somerset House." Everyone will
agree that everything possible should be done to take the burden of
the war debt off the shoulders of those who have fought for us; but it
is equally clear that now that the mischief of this huge debt has been
done, it will be exceedingly difficult to repair it by any ingenuities
of this kind. For instance, if the kind of taxation--in the shape of
a Compulsory Loan--proposed by "Ex-M.P." were enforced, how can we be
sure that it would not take a large slice off capital, the next heir
to which is a soldier or a sailor? Bad finance is so much easier to
perpetrate than to remedy that one is almost certain to come across
such objections as this to any scheme for making the war profiteers
"cough up" some of their gains.

Moreover, we have to remember that by no means the whole o