have brought was thus staked on the hazard; and it was a stake that the war-bonus principle of subsequent wage advances did not in fact redeem."
Such was the spirit of all classes in the first six months of the war. Such was the chance that Mr. Lloyd George missed in his 1915 Budget. Instead of a financial statesman we had an adroit politician who, seeing the people through the eyes of political agents and party wirepullers, thought it advisable not to ask them to pay any more taxes at present. Then, as so often throughout the war, the Government completely misunderstood the readiness of the people to bear the war's burdens and so undermined and impaired that readiness. Bad war finance, then introduced, and the consequent rise in prices brought with them competition among employers to make as much as possible out of the country's need and so invited the workers to join the game of grab; and so came suspicion and envy and bitterness, smouldering industrial unrest which seriously hampered the nation's productive effort, spendthrift extravagance, public and private, which wasted its resources and antagonism between classes of which the end is not yet.
During the war period, August 1 to
