It is in the interest of the community, whilst carefully guarding and fostering the rights, the opportunities and the well-being of all of its members, to give liberal incentives to men possessing those gifts to put them to active and intensive use. It is hardly open to doubt that, generally speaking, the work of able men, engaged in serious and legitimate business (I am not speaking of gamblers and parasites), whilst naturally benefiting them, benefits the community a great deal more. The income of hospitals, orphan asylums, institutions of learning and of art and many other altruistic enterprises depends largely upon the voluntary taxation, aggregating a great many millions annually, to which those men in America who have attained financial success have always willingly submitted themselves--more so, probably than in any other country. Who is to take care of all of those institutions if extreme taxation compels the rich to cease their contributions? III The arguments above set forth apply likewise, though naturally not quite in the same degree, to the proposal of levying an income tax rising to an excessively high level, as, for instance, the suggested tax of fifty per cent. on incomes over $500,000. There, again, the test should be whether so radical a tax is wise and required by the necessities of the country. The nations in Europe have been fighting for nearly three years and have been under an infinitely greater financial strain than our country is or will be, yet none of these nations have resorted to extreme taxation of income. _Even in Great Britain_, whose financial burden is the heaviest of all, whose debt is many times the total of ours and who has loaned about $5,000,000,000 to her Allies, the highest income tax rate, the maximum percentage in the graduated scale of taxation, is to-day no more than approximately forty per cent. In the last budget, introduced a couple of weeks ago, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer declined, so I am informed, to consider an increase in the income tax rate, because of the damaging effect which such increase would be apt to have on the country's business and prosperity. In France and Germany the burden laid on incomes is much lower than in England. _In Canada_ where war loans have been raised equivalent on the basis of comparative population to what would be more than $10,000,000,000 for America, _no Federal Income Tax exists at all_. I doubt whether this latter fact is generally known in this country and whether its significance is receiving the measure of serious consideration which it deserves. I understand that it is the deliberate policy of the Dominion Government to endeavor to avoid resort to an income tax in order to attract capital to Canada.