Heretofore, war has frequently necessitated the introduction of novel financial measures: ship money, debasement of the coinage, forced loans, the issue of an irredeemable paper currency, the creation of a permanent debt, the formation of national banks or banking systems, the adoption of the income tax, and the increase of excise and customs duties are a few of the expedients by which governments have tried to defray war expenditures in the past. Rightly or wrongly, many of these have been discarded. Debasement of the coinage, ship money, forced loans, and other devices of their ilk have long since disappeared from the financial systems of all first-class nations, if, indeed, they have not disappeared in all nations for all time to come. France and the United States have long since redeemed their depreciated paper currencies. Excise duties, imposed to meet such war emergencies as the American Civil, the Spanish-American, and South African wars, have been repealed or reduced to a peace basis. Other fiscal expedients, after revision, have found a permanent place in the fiscal systems of one or several nations. In Great Britain the income tax, which was introduced during the Napoleonic wars, now provides over 20 per cent of the revenue; there is