PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
Reading edition
Problems of Public Finance are looked at from different angles by different peoples, but are, in essence, much the same all over the world. Moreover it is possible that if the present war ends in the establishment of a League of Peace, based on the brotherhood of Mankind, as foreshadowed by President Wilson in his noble message to the Russian people, there may be a change in the outlook on questions of taxation, and they may be henceforward looked at from a new point of view, directed to the furtherance of that brotherhood. In any case, since one of the benefits that the people of the United States have always enjoyed is the power to profit by the mistakes of Europe, it is possible that an English view of the relations between the State and the property of its citizens may be of some interest in America.
Hartley Withers.
July 1917.