The national budget would have to be subject to frequent revisions in order to meet the Government's ever-rising costs in terms of money. Contracts would have to be limited to the briefest periods to avert the bankrupted of contractors. Large sections of the community living on fixed incomes, such as widows and pensioners, would be reduced to penury. Wage-earners might endeavour, with only partial success, to recoup their loss in real income by demanding wage increases, but each new increase would only serve to enhance the viciousness of the inflam tion spiral. The flow of savings would dry up, since no one will saw or lend money which is always losing its value.
Obviously it is to no one's interest to be swept to this Gadarene slope of bankruptcy. If our war machine is to run smoothly we must at all costs avoid the disorderly rout of inflation, and must take upon ourselves the orderly discipline of taxation and saving.
One final word. The country has unanimously applauded the recent acceleration in the output of munitions. It is inflexibly resolved that nothing shall be stinted in the provision of whatever is necessary to banish the unconscionable curse of Hitlerism from the face of the earth.
There is another £1,200,000,000 to be found to meet the bill in the next 12 months.
The nation desires no half-measures. It is ready and anxious to know the hard truth. It only asks that the Government shall tell it in all frankness exactly how and where the money can be found. Once it is told there can be no question about the nature of the response.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.