But, it may be contended, this is setting up an ideal so absurdly too high that you cannot expect any modern nation to rise up to it. Perhaps this is true, though I am not at all sure that if we had had a really bold and far-sighted Finance Minister at the beginning of the war he might not have persuaded the nation to tackle its war problem on this exalted line. At least it can be claimed that our financial rulers might have looked into the history of the matter and seen what our ancestors had done in big wars in this matter of paying for war costs out of taxation, with the determination to do at least as well as they did, and perhaps rather better, owing to the overwhelming scale of modern financial problems. If they had done so they would have found that both in the Napoleonic and the Crimean wars we paid for nearly half the cost of the war out of revenue as they went on, whereas in the present war the proportion that we are paying by taxation, instead of being 47 per cent., as it was when our sturdy ancestors fought against Napoleon, is less than 20 per cent.[1] Why has this been so? Partly, no doubt, owing to the slackness and cowardice of our politicians, and the apathy of the overworked officials, who have been too busy with the details of finance to think the problem out on a large scale. But it is chiefly, I think, because our system of taxation, though probably the best in the world, involves so many inequities that it cannot be applied on a really large scale without producing a discontent which might have had serious consequences on our conduct of the war. [Footnote 1: See _Economist_, August 4, 1917, p. 151.]