December 31, 1919 was the real turning point in our war finance, for it was the date on which our rulers went back to the good old habit of providing for expenditure out of revenue. It is true that for some years more they had to be very generous to themselves in their interpretation of the word revenue in order to achieve this feat, because included in their receipts were huge sums realized by the sale of assets that had been bought with money that had been borrowed during the war; and anyone who likes to be pedantic in book-keeping can argue that these sums were not revenue at all but receipts on capital account, the whole of which ought to have been devoted to debt redemption. Whereas, in fact, out of the £724,000,000 received from special receipts during the financial years ending March 31, 1920, 1921 and 1922, only £276,000,000 were available as surplus to redeem debt and the balance went to the relief of taxation.
It was not until the fiscal year 1922-23 that
