10 HOW TO PAY FOR THE WAR

who feel moved to do more can rest assured thattheir effort is not useless. A minimum plan willnot close the way to the voluntary self-sacrificeof individuals for the public good and the nationalpurpose, any more than our system of taxationdoes. The nation will still need urgently the fruitsof further personal abstention,—always bearingit in mind that some forms of economy are muchless valuable than others. But I also reckon it amerit of a prescribed plan that it reduces for theaverage man the necessity for a continuingperplexity how much to economise and for think-ing about such things more than is good. Anexcessive obsession towards saving may be moreuseful than lovely; it is not always he who decidesto save who makes the real sacrifice; and publicnecessity may sometimes become an excuse forgiving fuU rein with self-approval to an instinctwhich is also a vice.

The first provision in our radical plan (ChaptersV and VI) is, therefore, to determine a proportionof each man's earnings which must be deferred;—withdrawn, that is to say, from immediateconsumption and only made available as a rightto consume after the war is over. If the propor-tion can be fixed fairly for each income group,this device will have a double advantage. Itmeans that rights to immediate consumptionduring the war can be allotted with a closer regardto relative sacrifice than under any other plan.It also means that rights to deferred consumptionafter the war, which is another name for theNational Debt , will be widely distributed amongst