SAVING AND SPENDING
SIR,—My entrance into this discussion was a brief rejoinder to one of your correspondents who had waved aside the two- fifths of the " Drink Bill " annually taken by the State. As this amount is well over kroo,000,000—more than the total sales of the new War Savings Certificates up to date—it was reason- able to protest against such airy finance. As a sidelight, I reproduced for your readers an interesting comment by a Plain Citizen, who had remarked that the drink-taxes go absolutely and irrevocably into the Exchequer, while the loans come home to roost for repayment in full with interest. But I repeat that this was only a sidelight. My frontal beam was an explicit appeal—twice made by me and twice ignored by Mr. Macaulay —that Saving and considerate Spending should march part passu. Never have I said that it is better to spend than to save and lend.
Even to my Plain Citizen, Mr. Macaulay is unfair. That good man defended his one modest dozen of sherry (which gave the Exchequer LI 4s. outright) as a purchase which would last himself and his visitors " for nearly three months." Mr. Macaulay thereupon suggested that my friend and I might like to finance the War by coaxing our fellow-Britons to drink 4,380,000,000 bottles of sherry a year. He calls this a reductio ad absurdum of my words. I reply that any words can be reduced to absurdity if the reducer be allowed to misrepresent them. If my controversial methods, which Mr. Macaulay ridicules, were the same as his own, I could hold him up to scorn as one who teaches that the truest patriots are they who will help the fatherland only on gilt-edged security and at a good rate of interest. But bouts of sarcasm lead nowhere. The crucial question—i.e., whether wine is a selfish luxury or, as millions believe, a dietetic necessity—is coolly begged by Mr. Macaulay. Having begged it, he finds my letters " childish nonsense." This I do not mind. But his word " hypocritical " is of another colour ; and I do not intend to strain your valuable space by protracting a duel which has taken the place of useful
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