The next quotation is from the _New Statesman_:--[36]
Glasgow is exceedingly prosperous, and iron and steel manufacturers tell me that the next three or four years, peace or war, must mean a period of prosperity for them. Government orders now absorb so large a proportion of output that outside requirements are simply not being met. Owing to the scarcity of shipping this deficiency is not being filled by imports from America (the only other possible source of supply), so that unfilled orders are accumulating. A waggon manufacturer told me he had sufficient work in sight to keep him going for five years. It must be remembered that part of the cost of the war is being met temporarily by depreciation--railway tracks, rolling stock, locomotives, etc., _to mention only one industry_,[37] not being replaced as they wear out, or being maintained to the minimum degree necessary. This means that, although less obvious than the reconstruction of ruined parts of Belgium, France, Poland, and Eastern Prussia, repairs and replacements aggregating many millions sterling in cost will have to be carried out after the war in countries that have not been invaded. A peace boom in the iron and steel and shipbuilding trades appears certain.
Here, before passing on to more general considerations, we may notice incidentally--it is brought out in the first quotation--that the taxation of war profits reduces them proportionately but can never annul or quite overtake them. That is sufficiently obvious; but the fact must be preliminarily emphasised because it is quite commonly assumed that the mere imposition of a tax of 50 or 60 or 75 per cent automatically solves the problem of war profits. As a matter of fact, taxation so far from solving the problem leaves it essentially unchanged, and really connives at and recognises the practice. The problem remains, in spite of taxation, that one section of the nation is enriched by a process which necessitates the misery and death of other sections. We may therefore in a broad discussion of the problem leave out of account the proposed and adopted palliatives of taxation.
Secondly, we may notice--this is brought out in the second quotation--that profits directly produced by the war are not limited to the period of the war. This again is really axiomatic, being only another form of the platitude that it takes longer to construct than to destroy: but it means that even a short war of sufficient intensity will ensure a long period of profits, and therefore it noticeably aggravates the conclusions to which I hope to lead.