When Germany failed to pay the immense reparations which had been demanded from her the British Government was faced with the necessity of balancing its yearly Budget without those payments, and, unlike France, which still banked upon them, or like Germany, which created false money by inflation, determined to sustain the national credit by taxation and sound finance. It put the most tremendous burden upon the nation that has ever been sustained by any people in modern history. It was accepted with a resignation and courage which will stand for ever to the credit of the British folk, and especially to the credit of those who paid at the cost of all that was dearest to them in life apart from national honour and family blood. Income Tax, Super Tax, and Death Duties fell upon the people who lived on inherited wealth with a terrifying ferocity. There are only two and a half million people in Great Britain who pay any Income Tax at all, and only eighty-five thousand who are subject to Super Tax, but it was from that small minority that the Government demanded the revenue necessary for the upkeep of its services. It caused, and is causing, a social revolution which is changing the whole aspect of English life. The old aristocracy are abandoning their houses, selling their estates, becoming shabby genteel, losing their old splendour, prerogatives and power. To pay their Income Tax and Death Duties they are eating into their old capital, selling the old pictures on their walls, abandoning old mansions haunted by the ghosts of history in which their pride and spirit dwelt. They have done this not without anguish, not without a sense of tragedy, not without bitterness, but with an acknowledgment of inevitable necessity. Bloodlessly the revolution in England is being accomplished, though the hard road has not yet been travelled to the end. THE PRICE OF WAR