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1697
THE BUDGET.
TAX ON CAPITAL
DEBATE IN THE COMMONS.
By far the most interesting feature of the resumed debate on the Budget on April 23rd (says The Daily Telegraph) was an hour's address from Mr. Sydney Arnold on the Capital Levy. This was no casual performance on the spur of the moment. Mr. Arnold came to the House of Commons primed with what he called a practicable and equitable plan," not merely for easing the burden of the National Deht, but for getting rid of three-fourths of it at couple of strokes. The member for Holmfirth talks as rapidly as a conjurer, and lips his bands about in much the same profession al style, though he is a stock-broker by calling. But he did the Hey, presto!" business in rare style. Twice be gently. lifted the handkerchief, and away went
£0,000,000,000 of National Debt!
Here is his plan in brief. Assuming the total capital of the country to be £24,000,000,000, he would within four years make two levies upon the indivi- dual capitalist, each levy amounting to 19) - per cent of the whole. Soon!! capitalists up to £1,000 he would exempt nominally, because the tax would not to worth the cost of collecting; really because the working class investor would not stand it. The capitalist up to £5,000 would pay 4 per cent up to £20,000 he would pay 7 per cent; at £60,000 he would pay 12 per cent., and higher rates above. Each levy would produce £3,000,000,000, and no, said Mr. Arnold, without any confiscation or repudiation, three-quarters of the National Debt would be written off, while only about 20,000 people would pay above 123 per cent. His main arguments in favour of his scheme were that it would reduce the income-tax to the half-crown level, that it would not merely save a vast in tercat on the Debt, but a sinking fund of £45,000,000 on the £6,000,000,000 paid off, and that this would be a much better way of meeting the future than keeping up an income tax of ds. or 78. in the pound. The new debt had been borrowed, at high high prices; he pressed the finen cial wisdom of repaying most of it before prices dropped
PENALISING THRIFT.
have talked vaguely in the Commons of Hitherto only the Socialist member the Capital Levy, without going into details. Br. Arnold not merely had bis details ready, but sought to answer in advance the objections which he knew would be raised against him. He con tended that very little cash would h needed for the operation; that the diffi culties of valuation could be surmounted that securities would not require to he realised if the Treasury accepted the various alternatives which he offered them, and that any argument that might
LUBE OF THE SALIENT. WHAT YPRES MEANS TO THE BRITISH ARMY:
BY CIVILIAN.]
The fate of Ypres and what remains to balance, us of its salient still trembles in the fighting, is only two miles from the Voormezecle, of Saturday's southern outskirts of the town, and Kemmel looks down from behind on all the ground we held to the north. It was pleasant to rest one's eyes in that dreary fat by looking at the low, sharp blue ridge, like the Istip hills, above Oxford, which runs from Kemmel to the Mont des Cats and its upstanding convent. That pleasure has turned bitter now; it has Teased to be possible to murmur, will lift up ming eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help," for part of those hills hold the German batteries.
The salient itself did not come into
being by design. It represented our at tempt to turn the German right in 1914, which failed, and the German attempt to turn our left, which also failed. The trenches outside Ypres have always stood where both sides have stopped fighting from sheer exhaustion,
THEIR HEADSTONE.
scarred half-cirtle our own more than The history of the salient makes that any other section of the long battle line in Europe. There, almost alone, we have bren no temporary lodgers, but have held the tenancy of the premises against eviction ever since the racing armies marching parallel to each other on Calais turned inwards to the death struggle of October 1914, d.
Not even the area of the Somme, with its two titanio battice of 1916 and 1918, has become so familiar to the vast majo rity of British soldiers Thither came the Expeditionary Force, still redolent of Aldershot and the Curragh, even after Mons, the Marne, and the Aiste, and there, alas, most of them stayed for a period beyond the reach of time. The glory of the first battle of Ypres headstong they erected in theirs was the momoration.
ing into the empty Regular cadres, the Then came the Special Reservists pour Territorials, and the Canadians, to show. the Gormeng in the swaying and poisoned pandemonium of April, 1915, that, even without the spit and polish, they were Next came the Now Armies, and in 1917 as good lads as those who had gone before gave Ypres its lunge again, and put back the landmarks of their trenches to where the old contemptibles had seen the massed German divisions swarming us from Menin three years before, ANGUNAN FLANDERS TRADITION.
All through these years, division after division has taken its turn of duty in the salient not without those curses tradi tional to our army is Flanders. At night they saw the circle of fitful white flares rise and fall in a curve that scemed to
NEW
MAN-POWER CON
CESSIONS. TRIBUNAL RIGHTS FOR OLDER MEN.
GERMAN * COMB-OUT!
EVERY AVAILABLE MANA
· [FROM ** THE TIMES' " CORRESPONDENT
· THE HAGUE)
Important concessions in regard to the operations of local tribunals and the
April 7th. right of application to them wore mado
Germany is "combing out” every when Clause 4 of the Man-Power Bill factories, and drafting them into the available man, even from ammunition was before the House of Commons. Minis- combatant ranks. Bome of the works aro ters of religion are to be exempted from either closed or are employing only a service.
few girls, and raw material has ceased to arrive at certain works in the usual quantities.
Criticism of the clause in general was
which, apparently, it conferred on the directed towards the unlimited powers
Director of National Service...
Mr. Hayes Fisher, President of the Local Government Board, denied that the tribunal system as a whole was to be scrapped..
I am informed that the well-known Carlswerke at Cologne and Mülheim, for instance, were practically closed during the week, all the Germans being taken out for various services, some destined for the front. The usual supply of raw material was formerly about 16 trucks daily, it was reduced at the end of last week to four trucks, and at the begin- erased, alto-
"Men will have the same right under the present Bill as under previous Acts of appeal to a tribunal on the ground of personal, domestic, or financial hard ning of this week it ship," he declared: "I am bound together. At certain dyeworks in another Rhenish district only a fow girls were say, however, that, looking to the terrible left, all the Germans, even wounded men, gravity of the military situation, such having been transferred to other services. applications must be construed more works, which have also been employed on At Cologne the brickworks and cable- harshly than heretofore against appli- munition work are equally reduced to a cants,
few girls, or closed altogether, We have done our best to preserva Further, since the end of the week the ono man businesses, and we are still passager train service has been greatly. considering measures by which these can
Military trains running west be protected, but unless we obtain moro ruceced each other at frequent intervals, mon in the next few months there may and a large number of wounded are now Germany, the worst try the rag and bone business. The cases, however, tribunals must be instructed to, take a places in
Belgium harder
and harsher view of the cases to are not in good spirits, and take the come before
bo only one business left in the coun- being brought wing still reserved for
APPEALS.
of appeal from the local tribunal to the It is not intended to allow, the right appeal tribunal without the leave of the local tribunal. Applications in respect of any man may be made by himself or dependently. his employer, but not by both of them in exist, as for munitions and collieries, ap- Where special tribunals plication may not be made to those bunals and to a local tribunal as well.
Under the Bill it was proposed that a Council determining the grounds regulation might be made by Order in which application for exemption might he made. Mr. Hayes Fisher agreed to weet strong objections that had been raised by deleting these words,
on
The men going west
vili of venting thoir ill-humour
A neutral who reached Holland on Fri
day night had a conversation with German who had just returned from the Western front This Gorman, put the German losses nt, roughly, 250,000, and added Nobody any longer believes simply mown down by machine-guns. At that we shall reach Paris, We wore
of the dead bodies of our comrades reach one place the French made a rampart ing man-high. My informant asked it the Germans did not consider they had
Do you call that
a fine victory.
won a om
Later Bir George Cave, the Minister in charge of the Bill, in response to further uppens, agreed to remove another griev with the Minister of National Service, the arce by granting to applicants, equally right to appeal from adverse decisions to the appeal tribunal within time.
it limited
41
Mr. Tim Healy opened the Irish inter run right round behind them, so that ude by asking how the tribunals wese even as they trudged back to billets the to be set up in Ireland. Very lights and the mutter of the guns There is an impression in Ireland," seemed to march with them on their way he said, that this Bill is going to be In the daylight of summer they looked used against the Catholics in the Crom out on the flat, rolling land, with its wellian epirit, and that you will start miniature elevations and tiny valleys another religious war there. covered with the thin brown soil, pale cultivation, and scattered white-stripped copses. In the winter they wallowed voluminously in the filthy mud, deep settled for ever on the great clay belt which lies five feet down under the sand. They soaked and froze in abornination of desolation.
the very
SI EDWARD CABBOND
intervened.
Then Sir Edward Carson unexpectedly to know whether the machinery by which Like Mr. Healy, ho wished the Bill is to be applied to Ireland was to be military or local,
be urged against a Capital Levy as pena lising thrift applied equally against a high income tax. Confidence is a valuable asset in a financial reformer; Mr. Aruold preached his new.gospel as though he could not see
faw anywhere in the universal truth of every single propos ton he had laid down.
Ho was well answered by Mr. Theodore Taylor, Yorkshireman sitting for a Lancashire scat, whereas Mr. Arnold is a Lancashire man sitting for a Yorkshire constituency. Both are Radicals, but Mr. Taylor is of the older school, who do not
"Let the Government speak plainly, like State control of business, and he be
he said. "Do not let them say that they lieves profoundly in the virtue of por
cannot trust the Irish people so far as At all times they cursed the unlient in to tell them what the machinery will be sonal thrift. He opposed the Capital language as intense as their feelings, Levy tooth and nail, except in the shape and with a variety conditioned by place ing where we are in
"I and great difficulty: in understand-
D Ireland," of Death Duties. For if you take a slice of origin, natural talent, or acquired Sir Edward, amid repeated checra
continued of a living man's capital, he said and education. For all round the rifle fire begin to have grave doubts whether the can give him no assurance that bo will never ceased, and somewhere always Governrscat really mean to put the Bill not have another slice taken a little later, débris and heavy palls of smoke spouted other night I heard in this House either on one pretext or another, you up as though a whale were breathing out that it was not to be put into force until Into force (Loud Nationalist clitors.) take the heart out of his efforts. Why dirt, and the list of casualties grew. A Home Rule was passed-("No, no! and should he save and be stripped, while his battalion would go in for ten days and next-door neighbour spends every penny come out with eighty or ninety ensunities ment denied shortly afterwards on the Yost) and 1 heard that some state and escapes scot free? If the Capital without a single serap to show for them. Levy boa sound idea, it must be soundIt was the great German guns firing and it diffcult to understand how
same night. not for one emergency, but for all. Bach straight down the lines of trenches which was Mr. Taylor's argument, his view did the real mischief, though the battle evidently being that a Capital Tevy of Messines improved matters, would be the first easy step towards Bolshevism.
WHY HE CAME HOME.
to
General Smith-Dorrien wanted could not have his way. In the first light abandon it, and came home because he of dawn, at the grisly hour of "stand-
victory? replied the German.
It is also very noticeable that the
women are getting out of hand, as the tale of losses increases and as trainloads of Wounded return. The result of all these trainioads of wounded men in the circulation of wild rumotits to accuant the flooding out of a large body of Ger- for them-eg., the breaking of dykes and man troops; or again the breaking of the tank of the German position opposite Amiens and the collapse of the Crown Prince Rupprecht's Army. Wild storien. By, about Cologne of the loss of
10,000 prisoners in one day. These rumours, or some of them, are now exposed by the German Press on the demand of the military authorities, but they show the state of mind produced by the discro pancy between the official and other inspired reports of the situation and the facts as they appear from the transport of wounded.
HONGKONG POLICE RESERVE ORDERS ISSUED BY MR. P. C. JENKIN, CB
POLIO SCHOOL, JUNE, 1918 Reference Orders of June 12th and 13th,
members who Passed with Credit any of the Police School Examina- Lions in 1917 are exempt from attend. Attention of members of Nos, 1, 2, 3, ing the forthcoming Examination.
Monday, June 24th No. 8 Platoon.
and 7 Platoons is drawn to previous Orders.
Wednesday, June 26th. No. 1 Platoon. Tuesday, June 25th-No. 4 Platoon. Thursday, June 27th-No. 6 Platoon.
By Order,TAP T. F. Hovan, A.S.P. (R.) and Adjutant. June 17th, 1918
ST. JOHN AMBULANCE BRIGADE.
HONGKONG AND CHINA DISTRICT.
NO. 1 V.A.D. Commandant Lady Helena May, Lady of Grace of the Order of St. John Members are reminded of the Meeting
of Jerusalem in England.KAMU (Competition) to be held at the Helena May Institute on Monday, the 24th inst, at 5.30 p.m. Triangular bandages and splints will be required.
(Sd) M. RALPHS, Adjutant and Hon. Secretary. Hongkong, 18th June, 1918.
this proposition could be brought for- ward at all. Whatever view you take of it it, it is a very serious step. Nobody can deny that, after what has been said here Such was the salient, and yet that by representatives from Ireland, and Replying on the general discussion, the goodly procession of ghosts and still after reading as much as we are allowed Chancellor of the Exchequer thanked the living men damned it almost with affec- to know House for the favour with which it had tion, like the old-time resident telling
what is going on in Ireland. Believe me," he declared, swinging received his proposals, and dealt briefly you what he thinks of the South-Eastern towards the Treasury bench as the Na with some of the criticisms which had with a sort of inverted pride. It was a tionalists cheered again, your method been put forward. He said that his rotten place, but it was their own.
of doing this is likely to create a posi- banking advisers thought that the public
|tion of grave anxiety in Ireland. I will would. soon get used to the 2d; stamp on cheques, and be defended the increase
and you are playing with us the Ulster gentlemen opposite the Nationalists], tell you why. You are playing with hon. in the Post Office charges on the ground that without such increase the Post to men turned inwards and saw the will give you Home Rule in return for members] You are telling them We Office would soon cease to be self-support- inint gleam of the white ghost of a city contoription; you are telling us that ing. The sugar increase be justified on There was the serrated edge of stil you will give us wonscription lit return the ground that a man with four or five wreckage, the two pinnacles then still for Home Rule. What children gained twice as much by the standing, ineffable, serene, remote, asthat if we will only accept conscription subsidy in the loaf as he would lose by though in the ruin of a world the you will reward us with Home the rise in the price of sugar. The luxury soal of maa tax would be the stronger if it had the to
still would not deign resist which we took up arms, bow to the hammer blows of Nationalist and Labour cheers.) authority of a Select Committee of thetores or fate as they fell with a "All I can say is that no one realises House of Commons behind it. Mr. Boner distant and muffled thud in the cobbled fatal mistake in the manner in which you was evident that the Government would
more than I do that you have runde a
Mr. Asquith, in a brief speech, said it Law said that every effort was made to market square. Wo waved the fragments have brought this before the House, and to well advised to proceed with great cau- secure full value for money in the spend. of Ypres, the last city of Belgium, like ing departments; the War Office was now the rags of a tattered flag in the face of south, though for different reasons. You closely you approach the actual admin-
that is the feeling in Ireland, north tion regarding Ireland." one of the best administered of all; im
"The moro the German fire. provements were being carried out at the We still think of what scarce pleasures us further in the dark and do not let us
will
make it ten times worse if you keep the difficulties will bo realised. I
istrative probleme," he said, "the more Admiralty, and they were doing what there were in that area the pleasant buts know what you are going to do in Irets introduction, not because 1 do not they could with the Ministry of Muni in the bright woods of early summer, of land for the purpose of carrying out this think that Irishreen should be subject to Vlamentinghe, where long ago men once scheme. Tell us the whole truth. I have the same law as Englishmen, but because had baths, and of dear old "Pop," the always been
of the special conditions affecting
tions!
The Budget resolution was then passed by the House without a division.
LONG-RANGE GUN MARVELS.
very centre of civilisation, in whose broad Order in Gpicious when
that mean
to
and
it all in people of that country
Tegret
the
market place and narrow streets were to the Bill Until we hear a great deal why not have an
debate turned to the question be bought the wares of the world. May more I shall not believe that you are ministers of religion, and in response to I die, as the post says, "if ever I forget going to apply this to Ireland at all.
various speeches of protest it was agreed Sir Robert Hadfield, the great sterl
these things."
Mr. Dovin rose immediately in an ani- by the Home Secretary to omit the pro maker, of Sheffield, addressing the
mated House to congratulate bis chief posad which would have made them habla Society of British Gas Industries, recent
Fantagonist on his most remarkable, to service. ly. produced what he described as two
Sir A. Geddes said that of the men of the most remarkable specimens of steal
Coues, and straightforward speech.
from The members had ever seen. He said that Board
thirty nine to forty-three 80 per in an Irishamn, Mr. R. E. Prothero, Tresident of the Devlin. He has been a long time find cent, are still in civil life, after two years
of Agriculture, addressing a ing it out, but he has found out now that of recruiting, because more than 105,000 feet, and that they landowners at Shrewsbury, said if they
standard. In the first year less than 10 per cent. were Mr. J. H. Thomas declaimed against recruited. Consequently it is estimated
"SAVING OUR SKINS"
declared Mr.
both had been twenty miles up in the crowded meeting of agriculturists and you can trust, nobody on those benches tions of too low a physics bold exemp
*
UNFAIR
WAR
On Claase VR VEITANOdes said that
it is intended to exempt men who served
were parts of a shell from a long-dange wanted an appeal to their selfishness lethe unfairness of allowing only the Minis that the recruiting of the older men will gun fired into Paris
The weight of the shell is believed to them grow more food at home and save be about 230lbs," added Sir Robert." It their own skins, for they might rely on ter of National Service to appeal from be only 7 per cent in the first year, has a muztio
morgs of 48,00 foot-tons it that if we were forced from luck of the tribunals, and this brought the Hours and a gun pressure of twenty-eight tons food to accept a German peace they Secretary's concession per square inch. At the muzzle the shell would be skinned alive, and every pound Carson that the Bill would be enforced in Bir George Cave assured Bir Edward would perforate six feet of wrought iron, of profit-they wrung from the soil by the Ireland, and stated that the Iriah tri or about fifty-four inches of mild steel. sweat of their brow would go to pay the bunals would be appointed in exactly the When the shell leaves the gun it must taxes under the indemnity that Germany same way as the English. have locked up in it as much energy would enforce unr present 15-inch shell.”
(Continued at foot of next Column.)
of escaped prisoners of war will be con-
in the field in previous wars. The case
sidered, but men who have served thir- teen years with the colours and passed the age of forty-one are too valuable to be exempted.