TOPICS OF THE DAY.
RATION THE DEPARTMENTS.
T ORD FISHER'S shrewd and characteristic letter, I published in Tuesday's Times, dealing with our spendthrift Empire reminds us of the saying of one of the editors of the Times," Repetition is the soul of Journalism."
The great Publicist was right. You must employ a " damnable iteration " even to bring the most self-evident truth home to the plain man's mind ; unless, of course, you are writing of a boxing match or first-class cricket. We make no apology, therefore, for returning this week, as we mean to return on many future Saturdays, to the subject of retrenchment by rationing. We have had during the past week a capital example of what rationing could do to check national extravagance and to promote national thrift. At the present moment, insane as it sounds, it is actually proposed to spend an extra £3,000,000 wrung from the nation by the most exacting system of taxation that the world has ever known, on red coats for our soldiers. That we cannot do too much for our soldiers, and that we must pay them, not merely the lowest market price for their labour, but more in money, and much more in honour and gratitude, we should be the very first to admit. The notion of squandering these extra three millions in order to make the troops look gaudy as well as neat and on the obscurantist plea that our troops won't fight unless they are dressed " fine " is utterly ridiculous. As Sir David ...)avies said in an excellent letter in Monday's Times, " Khaki is the everlasting embodiment of the spirit of the trenches." What was good enough for the greatest acts of heroism ever displayed by human beings, for that is the bare truth in regard to our military record, is held on the authority of some defeatist recruiting sergeant or self- satisfied Irivate to be something at which the soldier of the future will turn up his nose.
But how does this three million item affect the argument for rationing ? In this way : Does any sane man suppose that if the Secretary of State for War and the Army Council were to-have allotted to them the sum of Blank millions a year, i.e., whatever was the sum which was apportioned to them out of the existing revenue, the War Departments would dream for a moment of wasting three millions of their money on red cloth coats ? If it clearly and visibly meant less money for other things would they dress their fighting force in clothes in which they could never be allowed to fight ? Of course not. Our army chiefs would never be persuaded by the babble of any witness, great or small, about the attractive force of a showy tunic, to spend their precious money on red cloth instead of on Tanks, Aeroplanes and Machine guns. The suggestion could never have been made except by people accustomed to a regime which is essentially uneconomical, a regime under which you have not got to cut your coat according to your cloth, but can waste as many yards as you like of it on merely metaphysical or sentimental grounds. Let us never forget that it is an easy thing to make out a good case for almost any form of expenditure. It is even easier to make out a case in the abstract against reducing almost any form of expenditure already in existence. It is only when a man looks at eighteenpence in his hand and knows that that is all the money he has got with which to buy his dinner, that he really lays out his money to the very best advantage and suffers not a penny to be wasted in show or fancy. If the demand for an extra three millions for red cloth is ultimately vetoed, as we feel sure it must be, it will be a useful lesson. When people this time next year find that the army is being successfully recruited on Khaki they will look back with amazement and disgust upon this irrational proposal—one of the worst forms of extravagance ever contemplated.
There are, of course, a thousand other things which, like red cloth, would never stand the test of rationing. Rationing makes men realize that if you spend money on one object you have not got it to spend on another. That is what we all feel in our private expenditure. It is also the essential need in all national expenditure, only unfortunately in the case of national expenditure this fact is too often concealed. There like madmen we are inclined to act on the belief that the need or what we call the need for expenditure is the essential thing, and that when we have labelled a thing as necessary the money can and will somehow be found to get it. On the present occasion we cannot enlarge in further detail upon the needs of rationing. We may, however, express our gratitude to the Times for publishing Lord Islington's letter in last Saturday's issue and also for the excellent letter signed " Observer," which appeared on Tuesday. These two letters supported by an able leader on Mesopotamia show the madness which comes from taking over huge tracts of country not on the old basis of heroic adventure, the basis on which in former times the Empire was developed, but on the most extravagant foundation. If the mandates for Mesopotamia and Palestine mean the kind of financial commitments which they appear to be going to mean then we should at once refuse them. Let richer nations, if such can be found, do the job. Here, if anywhere, rationing is absolutely necessary. We can provide adventurous administrators and soldiers for these places but we cannot provide them with unlimited money, or what is the same thing, with large detachments of white troops. Our administration in these places must be taken over on the basis that the mandatory countries can be self-supporting. They must live on their own. No doubt to make themselves self-supporting means far slower development, but slow development in Asia is far better than bankruptcy in England. And here we should like to endorse most heartily the words with which " Observer " concludes his letter in the Times. The British Imperialist is he who sees most clearly that a spendthrift Empire is a ruined Empire. It is because we are strong and convinced Imperialists and not because we are Little Englanders that we raise our voices against the madness of illimitable commitments and indefinite responsibilities.
Once more : let no man be able to accuse us of mere unspecific wailing for imperial thrift. Such wailing is useless. We demand a policy of drastic retrenchment secured by a definite system of rationing. We know what our taxes yield at the present moment, and we know or we ought to know that we can raise no more money without destroying the fertility of the taxable soil. We know also that these are good years and that lean years are coming, and that we must not expect the present taxes to draw as well as they are drawing now. In other words, to find the maximum amount which we have to spend we must probably calculate for a fifteen per cent. diminution of the present yield of the taxes. We must also make provision for an annual reduction of the Debt, though it can only be a sma'l reduction. Such reduction may indeed have to be confined to what we may call the difference between the average yield of the taxes and the yield in good years. With the sum that remains over we must ration the departments and ration them of course under careful supervision.
But it is impossible to get Ministers to do this ! We do not agree. It is quite possible. The politician has plenty of bad sides but he has one good side. He really does wish to obey his great master the public. When once he is made to understand that the carrying out of a policy of retrench- ment through rationing will give him power and office, that policy will become fashionable and he will produce it as a clever tradesman produces the fashionable coat or hat of the season. Once let the taxpayers and the House of Com- mons show that they are in earnest over the matter and they will soon find a body of politicians acting together and forming a party of retrenchment. At present they all think retrenchment doesn't pay, and point to Mr. Lloyd George, the great spender, as the most popular and most trusted man in the country. They are wrong. If they are wise they will realise that the new mood is the mood of retrenchment through rationing, and that the first group of would-be Ministers who seriously study and adopt that policy will get the loaves and fishes of the future.
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