Mr. Shaw, we may add here, has since explained that
he • meant little more than to argue that the Social Services were cheap compared with the unnecessarily large burden of the National Debt, but his language cos: *eyed much more than that and was exceedingly indi--creet. It distinctly suggested repudiation. A large part of the War Loans is held in trustee investments. Stock has changed hands many times. Mr. Herbert G. Williams has calculated in a letter to the Times that the various dealings in regard to the National Debt have had the effect of enriching the State at the expense of the lenders to the amount of £50,000,000 in pre-War gold values. Mr. Shaw's suggestion that the property of the rentier should be partly confiscated is, of course, not new. We believe that whenever this mad proposal, so injurious to the credit of the country, has been proposed in the Labour Party it has been heavily " jumped upon " by Mr. Snowden. He knows that when he wants money he can only borrow it at the current market value—which, after all, is what the rentier gets. In the division the second reading of Miss Bondfield's Bill was carried by a majority of 86.
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