LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
DEFLATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I greatly regret that in my letter published in your issue of October 27th I have misquoted Sir Josiah Stamp in regard to the estimated wealth of this country at the beginning of 1920. I find in my notebook I inadvertently used the name of Sir Josiah Stamp in.stead of Mr. Edgar Crammond. If we accept Sir Josiah Stamp's estimate of 09,000,000,000 to £20,000,000,000 as our wealth in 1920 it only makes the position of the taxpayers worse than I represented it in my letter.
There is no dispute as to the figures regarding our National Debt, and no one will dispute the fact that, owing to the deflation -policy the shrinkage of values of practically all commodities and property has been very great during the past two years, so that instead of our National Debt representing one-half of the national wealth it would represent a much larger proportion, and I fail to see how we shall ever be able to restore trade prosperity so long as we have this crushing burden of taxation to contend with. To attempt to stabilize the pound at its present value means stabilizing trade stagnation. Justice demands that the War debt should be reduced in relation to the national wealth to what it was when the debt was incurred.
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