The National Debt

CHAPTER XIV

THE PROBLEM OF REPAYMENT

Prior to the end of the war the vast growth of the Debt had brought forth proposals for large-scale repayment by means of a levy on capital.¹ At the time when these proposals were first raised it was evidently feared that without a considerable sacrifice of this sort it would be impossible for solvency to be maintained. Thus in a volume entitled How to pay for the War, published in 1916 under the auspices of the Fabian Research Department, it was suggested that “even an income tax at ten shillings in the pound—even if augmented by every kind of indirect taxation that the ingenuity of the Chancellor of the Exchequer can devise—may possibly not sufiice to make both ends meet in that momentous first or second ...