EVACUATION AND TAXATION Sia,—May I be allowed to comment on
one problem in evacuation areas that is gravely affected by the rapidly increasing taxation—that of the education of one's children?
Let me, to be precise, cite my actual situation. I have two children, a boy and a girl, aged ten and eight respectively. They have beer', going the one to a day preparatory school and the other to a high school. They were listed for evacuation with their schools, and thi duly took place on September 1st, 5939. Both schools have s been turned into boarding schools for " the duration."
claim of the door-bell and the telephone made it quite Hence o maid (
school bills have inevitably increased to between three and four times as much as they were before. (And in addition there wns m° initial expense in the way of trunks, extra clothes, school kit, Sre) To meet this menace to our children's educational future my wif and I have (a) taken in paying guests, (b) given up one our house is a fair-sized and exceptionally busy vicarage ; the c()Iltin t settle down to any continuous reading or thinking), ini(cresxseibrci'-cse, severe personal economies—we have never been able to afford a o• so we could not give that up!
Now there is increasing danger of our children having to be with- drawn from their schools, at which they have been happy for some years, and sent, I suppose, to new schools, in strange billets far away, with strange children and strange teachers, to begin a changed educational life of a different character in quite altered circumstances.
My wife and I ask nothing for ourselves. We are fully ready and willing to pay our taxes to the full, whatsoever they may be. Our one hope is to preserve the education of our children on the lines along which they have already set out. With educational expenses presenting no _claim for taxation relief, our fear is that it cannot be done. How, one wonders, are others in like circumstances meeting
this particular situation?—Yours faithfully, PHAROS.
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