"We can not get increased taxes unless the country knows what they are to be and practices the necessary economy to make them available. Definiteness, early definiteness, as to what its tasks are to be is absolutely necessary for the successful administration of the treasury....
"The present tax laws are marred, moreover, by inequities which ought to be remedied....
"Only fair, equitably distributed taxation of the widest incidence, drawing chiefly from the sources which would be likely to demoralize credit by their very abundance, can prevent inflation and keep our industrial system free of speculation and waste.
Poster for Boy Scouts Who Worked for the Victory Loan
"We shall naturally turn, therefore, I suppose, to war profits and incomes and luxuries for the additional taxes. But the war profits and incomes upon which the increased taxes will be levied will be the profits and incomes of the calendar year 1918. It would be manifestly unfair to wait until the early months of 1919 to say what they are to be....
"Moreover, taxes of that sort will not be paid until the June of next year, and the treasury must anticipate them....
"In the autumn a much larger sale of long-time bonds must be effected than has yet been attempted....
"And how are investors to approach the purchase of bonds with any sort of confidence or knowledge of their own affairs if they do not know what taxes they are to pay and what economies and adjustments of their business they must effect? I can not assure the country of a successful administration of the treasury in 1918 if the question of further taxation is to be left undecided until 1919."
Mr. Wilson's appeal for the practice of personal economy met with widespread approval in England, as it did in the United States. The Economist considered that his manifesto to the American people on this subject was among the greatest documents that the war has produced. National self-sacrifice had gone far, but not far enough. To attain Mr. Wilson's standard of individual patriotism much was still needed, the Economist says: