The nation's realizable assets to be set against the mountain
of Debt, Mr. Bonar Law estimated, might be valued at £1,172,000,000. This sum included £375,000,000 for commodities to be resold ; £17,000,000 for land, buildings, and ships ; £100,000,000 for stores that have cost thrice as much ; an equal sum for surplus assets to be acquired this year ; and £500,000,000 for Excess Profits Duty to be collected in the years following the declaration of peace. The new taxes would increase the proportion of our total expenditure borne out of revenue from 26.3 per cent. to 281 per cent.; thepro- portion of our war expenditure borne out of revenue would rise from 25.3 per cent. in the year now ended to 26.5 per cent. in the current year. Our financial strength was far greater than any one could have supposed. As for Germany, who was spending as much as we were, the new taxation levied during the war had yielded only £365,000,000, or barely a third as much as our war taxes. By next year the German Debt would amount to £8,000,000,000. The German Government had increased their permanent revenue of £150,000,000 to 1.215,000,000, and announced new taxes to bring up the total to £335,000,000. But this would not go far to meet a permanent expenditure, for Debt, pensions, and the normal services, which Mr. Boner Law estimated at £720,000,000.
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