ABSTRACT
Before the war it was reckoned that the annual savings of people in the United Kingdom came to about £400 million a year, this being one-sixth of the national income, which was estimated by the Treasury at £2,400 millions. These figures of course are estimates and not statistics, but there is nothing else to take their place. Quiet middle-class people who used to put by their hundred or two a year may have continued to do so, but instead of investing it they have had to pay over the money to the tax collector. Government lacked the courage to raise the money by taxation, for Mr. McKenna came to the Exchequer too late for an effective reversal of the financial policy adopted in the first ten months of the war, it has had to raise larger and larger War Loans. So long as the Government continues to pay for a war out of borrowed money prices must keep on rising.
