A DIFFICULT THREE MONTHS.
I wonder if many readers of The Spectator have had special appeals just lately to spend as much as possible during the ensuing three months so as to aid the unemployed during the hardest winter months of the year. If they have, I am sure that one and all will have desired to respond as far as may be possible to the appeal, but I would like to express sym- pathy with those who, however keenly they desire to respond, find themselves hampered by the fact that the appeal comes nt the most trying period of the year for the employed as well as for the unemployed. I fancy that not a few who may have had good cash balances in December and anticipate satisfactory balances after the end of March find that the first three months of the year, which arc subject to Income Tax and Surtax demands, the most difficult period of the year for responding to charitable appeals. Moreover, this year the position in this respect will not have been improved so far as the rentier is concerned, or at all events as holders of the old Five per Cent. War Loan are concerned, by the fact that the interest has been reduced to 81 per cent. That most satis- factory Conversion scheme will involve a considerable saving to the Exchequer, but there must be a corresponding reduction in the purchasing power of the rentier. Doubtless, however, the appeal to spend wisely but as largely as possible during the next three months may still be responded to by those with slender bank balances by mortgaging the future a little. But the money cannot be spent twice over. There is, perhaps, just a little disposition on the part of those who advocate free spending to assume too confidently that the greater mass of the community is in the possession of surplus
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