B_345_The-Rulers-of-Russia

nation has paid on account of the debt and interest charges the
sum of £868,000,000 more than the original debt of March 31st,
1919, without reducing the original debt by one shilling!" Moneylending
to nations seems to be even more lucrative than lending
to individuals! Mr. Kitson, however, in The Bankers' Conspiracy,
shows that matters were still worse than these figures indicate.
The Cunliffe Currency Committee's Report, issued in
August, 1918, recommended the restoration of the gold-standard
at the pre-War parity "without delay." In The Bankers' Conspiracy,
p. 92, we read: "In advising the restoration of the goldstandard
they are advising the Government to increase the National
Debt and so add to the burden of taxation which the British
public will have to bear. At present our National Debt approximates
to £8,000,000,000! But what are these pounds and with
what were they subscribed? The Committee must know that the
War Loans were subscribed in 'cheap' pounds, approximating in
value to only one-half of the pre-War pounds. Hence our War
debt, expressed in pre-War pounds, would be less than £4,000,-
000,000! By restoring the gold-standard, the public debt would
therefore be doubled and become £8,000,000,000 at pre-war value!
Hence every taxpayer would be compelled to pay twice the amount
of taxes in his products and services by reason of the Committee's
recommendations. Very nice for the money-lenders and warloan
subscribers, but rather hard on the wealth producers and
taxpayers! . . . The money-lenders' code of morals—which the
Committee apparently endorses—is that, whilst it is very wicked
for debtors to defraud their creditors, creditors are quite justified
in robbing their debtors. This seems to be the moral basis of the
gold-standard." It may be well to add that Mr. Winston Churchill
restored the gold-standard in 1925.
On the other hand, "this high-taxing, high-spending policy is
laid down in innumerable Socialist handbooks as an essential preliminary
to the imposition of full Socialism. Private enterprise
is to be so crushed with burdens of every sort that it is glad to
throw in the sponge and quit. . . . Taxation is the chief means/
says Britain's Socialist Fabian Society in its Tract No. 127, adding
that 'to the Socialist, the best of governments is that which
spends the most.' Similarly emphatic was a leading American
exponent of Socialism, the late Morris Hillquit (a Jew whose
real name was Misca Hilkowicz), who pointed out in his Socialism
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