ABSTRACT
When the Chancellor of the Exchequer issues a War Loan for a thousand millions, what happens? Some people seem to think that the country is straightway £1,000 millions richer, because the citizens hold War Loan Stock to that amount. Mr. Withers seems to have been the first person to state publicly that a war must be paid for as it goes on, but war theory was in type, though not published, before Mr. Withers' book came out. That theory was outlined in an Appendix to the British Association report for 1917: "This objection is founded on a mistaken belief that is the belief that a nation can engage in a long war and yet evade the cost of it by throwing the burden on posterity." The "man in the street" knows little about economic laws, and is naturally inclined to believe that the Government will not adopt the wrong policy in matters of finance merely from want of courage.
