24 
Land & Water 
August 8, 19 18 
jumped to the ground. The Karl, too, was fighting on his 
feet. "Good lad, good lad!" Bemerton heard him cry. 
Into the heart of the knot the English broke. Bcnierton 
felt his sword shear through an armoured shoulder. Some- 
thing hit his left foot. Something had torn away part 
of his boot. And then he spun over altogether. Just a 
minute of blackness, as though the sun had gone out. 
Once before. ... „ c i- 
It didn't last long. \ funny, sweetish smell, lamiliar. 
and vet. ... He wondered where he had been. A 
singing noise, a rushing noise, rather like the sound that 
the .\dder makes where it races over the shallows. But not 
that. No. . . . His head. Ves, his head. He put up 
his right hand, and another hand gently checked it so that 
he put it down again. In the left hand, pins and needles. 
He tried to move the fingers, and found that the pins 
and needles wouldn't let him. \oices. . . 
"Is he all right. Sister?" . . , 
"■^es ... I think he's coming round. I wonder if it s 
come off?" 
"We can't tell vet. A depressed fracture of the inner 
tabic, vou know. Pressure. We trephined. Of course it 
may be all right. Depends on the actual damage done 
to the grey matter. ..." 
Who we're thev talking about? 
Two months later he got his furlough. He came home 
to the .Adder valley when the lambing was over and the 
meadows full of 'buttercups. Lxjng grass had already 
reached above the. faded stalks of the cowslips, cuckoos 
were calling, and the .\dder trout were gorged with mayfly. 
England was no less wondeiful to a man who had a plate 
of silver in his head in place of part of his skull, and in 
the excitement of his return his dream, or whatever yoa 
wish to call it, was forgotten. Indeed, it might well have 
been forgotten altogether if a strange chance had not befallen 
him One morning his mother came home from the market. 
He was sitting in the garden under a pink hawthorn tree, 
thinking of nothing in the world, only breathing the scents 
of earlv summer and listening to the murmur of the Adder 
She gossiped pleasantly, and her quiet voice mingled with 
that of the river. 
"I .see'd her Ladvship this morning,' said Mrs. Bemerton, 
"and she inquired 'after 'ee . . . said she'd like to see 'ee 
if you'd go up to The House. Vou know they've a'turned 
it 'into a hospital now, and her Ladyship goin' about all 
in white with a cross on her chest?" 
Next day Sergeant Bemerton walked over the meadows 
to Wylie, "ai'id waited in the cool of the great hall among 
the busts of emperors, the sheaves "of tourney lances, and 
the stacks of ancient armour. He had been \here before 
as a child, and felt almost at home in its faintly musty and 
wholly characteristic smell. He remembered the skeletal 
men-at-arms of the gallery and the piled lances, and it was 
only by accident that he found himself standing, with hot 
hands,' in front of one magnificent suit which stood alone. 
It was onlv by accident that he troubled to read the painted 
inscription : 
.Armour of Anne de Montmorency, 
High Constable of France. 
Taken prisoner by 
T\e First Earl 
at 
The battle of St. Quentin, 
^ .■\ugust loth, 1557. 
.And even when he had read it he scarcely understood. 
The Finance of the War : By Brougham Villiers 
ON the outbreak ©f hostilities in 1914 the Imperial 
Parliament passed such measures as were thought 
necessary in the emergency, including an adequate 
\'ote of Credit, and was prorogued on September 
i8th. In November it met again, when a further 
Credit was granted, while on the 19th, Mr. Lloyd George 
introduced his supplementary Budget. This Budget imposed 
increases of taxation estimated to jdeld £26,000,000 a year ; 
ample to provide for an expected falling-off in some items 
of revenue, as well as to secure the interest on any monpy so 
far borrowed. Meantime, the work of the Treasury Depart- 
ment was proceeding in a way almost normal. Other 
departments might be in a state of confusion, and the officials 
might be worked almost to death, but the routine at the 
Treasury' went on almost undisturbed. Tliere were large 
dues to collect, but they could be collected through the same 
machinery from substantially' the same people ; the younger 
officials who had been working under the Department might 
fall out and join the new Army, but retired members of the 
staff came back to work or those who were left put in longer 
hours ; nothing occurred to interfere with the continuity 
» and general efficiency of the Department. The regular 
routine was not disturbed, 'and though the work made 
heavier calls on the Treasury men, there were probably few 
things less disturbed by the war than the British Finance 
Department. 
Meantime, something very different was happening abroad. 
There, however effectively the military and other departments 
may have faced the strain of the war, it is the bare truth to 
say that the whole machinerj' of the revenue collapsed without 
a struggle. Consider w'hat was required. National expendi- 
ture, of course, rose immediately to far beyond jjeace level, 
so that a vast expansion of the peace income was a vital 
necessity. This could be obtained only by loans or taxation, 
and it was of the utmost importance that as large a propor- 
tion as possible should be obtained by the latter method. 
There is a fairly well-marked point below which the per- 
manent revenue should never under any circumstances be 
allowed to fall. It should always provide for the mainten- 
ance of the civil services, for the normal expenditure on the 
Army and Navy on a peace footing, and for the interest on all 
debts contracted up to the moment. If, for instance, a 
government at wtr is compelled to borrow a thoiisand million 
pounds at 5 j^er cent., it ought at the very least to impose 
taxation that would bring in fifty millions a year. Some 
day or other it is clear the thing will have to be done, or the 
new creditors of the State will not get their interest ; and if 
the'taxpayers of the country are not prepared to face their 
obligations when full of the enthusiasm of a great struggle, 
they are not likely to be more willing in the reaction after it. 
Far from rising to the occasion, the existing revenues of 
Europe began to crumble to pieces at the very outbreak of 
war. In so far as they depended on Customs duties on 
necessary food-stuffs, they must have been reduced almost to 
nothing. According to two returns I obtained in the early 
days of the war from th£ Board of Trade, giving particulars 
of foreign food-tax suspensions as far as they were known, 
Germany had been compelled to put all the leading food- 
stuffs on the free fist by September 17th, 1914, and by tlie 
following March what little was feft of the tariff was swept 
away. France began by suspending her duties on wheat on 
July 31st before the war had really begun, in September the 
duties on cattle, and in October those on meat followed. 
At the time the returns in question were given, the French 
tariff on wheat had been partially resumed, but virtually all 
other food-stuffs were on the free hst, and could be jnelding 
no revenue. The strugglesiof the Austrian Protectionists to 
maintain some part of their food tariff during the first year of 
war make amusing reading ; but by October, 1915, the last 
rehc of it disappeared, and Austria now depends entirely on 
the protection of the Entente navies to keep out foreign 
competition in food. This is no doubt very effective, but it 
does not bring Austria any money. After partial or tem- 
porary reductions earlier, Italy suspended her taxes on 
cereals and similar food-stuffs from January ist, J915 — 
several months before she entered into the war. Neutrals 
fared no better. F'rom Spain, whose tariff on imported food 
vanished almost entirely, to Sweden, which simply suspended 
those on wheat and wheat-flour, all the elaborate tariffs of 
Western Europe — on necessary foods, at least — were sus- 
pended in whole or in part from the first year or two of 
the Vvar. 
This, of course, whatever else it might do, involved a loss 
of revenue just at the time when increased revenue was 
most needed. Nor, except in Italy, was it accompanied by 
any attempt to provide an alternative source of income, 
much less to supply the Governments with increased means 
to meet the large liabilities they were piling up every day. 
No true understanding of the financial situation brought 
about by the war, and the bearing it must have on the recon- 
struction of civilisation after it, is possible, unless we realise 
how differently the revenues of Europe and those of Great 
Britain reacted to the strain from the beginning. Our peace 
methods being relatively sound, our finance responded to 
the need as a strong man meets a sudden call to action. His 
heart-beats are stronger and his pulses throb more rapidly. 
