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with. But under this fascist system a large part of the public spendingis made possible by public borrowing. The spending of borrowedmoney as a permanent policy with a continuous rise in the publicdebt can have only one effect. As the debt rises, the yearly interestcharge increases. In time the interest charge gets to be more thanall the other costs of government. Funds for interest can be obtainedonly by taxes. A rising public debt means a continuously risinginterest charge and persistently rising taxes to service the debt.When this war ends, this government will have to collect moremoney just to pay interest on the debt than it has ever collected forevery other purpose in any year up to and including 1941. And thisis only the beginning. For as the war ends, the government is planningnew and more adventurous and, as it likes to say, "dynamic"uses of public debt than ever. Of course businessmen and individualswill resist such taxes. The free society knows such a device as the"tax strike." We have seen that happen in our cities within the lastdozen years when in some places—Chicago noticeably—schoolteachershad to go unpaid for several years because the payment oftaxes ceased. Only in a totalitarian state can these oppressive leviesbe imposed and enforced. And even in such a state there is a limit.But the limit in the free society is swiftly reached. Mussolini couldoperate a system like this for twenty-one years in Italy. But he wouldhave come to an end long before if Italy had had a free parliamentanswerable to the people to make its laws. It is for this reason—andthere are other reasons as well—that I make the statement that thismanaged public-debt-supported autarchy must turn to the totalitariangovernment or abandon its plans.1. THE TOTALITARIAN STATEDoes anyone seriously believe that a totalitarian government willappear here? Where is this dictator to come from? Is not our Constitutionan impassable barrier to dictatorship? Are we likely toamend it—which requires the consent of thirty-two states—to invitea dictator to govern us? If not, then where is he to come from? Ishe to spring out of the ground? No. He will not spring out of theground. And probably we will not amend our Constitution to oblige228