They submitted to terrible taxation, to many privations, besides the universal gift of their young blood.

We won the war and what was the result?
The wealth of the country, through ghastly legislation, drifted into the hands of the profiteering classes, the wholesale shopkeepers, the ship owners, the factory owners, the mine owners.

The professional man with two thousand a year was able to save a quarter of that before the war.

After the war, taxation demanded that quarter and more for income tax, thrust upon him an increased cost of living, cut the ground from beneath his feet.

It isn't either of the two extremes--the aristocrat or the labouring man--where you must look for the pulse of a country's prosperity.