THE MAIL--

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

This is to register a protest against your editorial in praise of a proposed scheme to distribute bonus payments in form of non-transferable five year bonds to the trainees now in service. To me your position seems altogether unsound.

1. Over the past decades the pressure for payments of soldiers' bonuses has been on of the most unwholesome aspects of our political scene. There is little reason for reintroducing the issue prematurely and with government support. Even a skeptic will admit that the morale of an army is not made or unmade by bonus payments.

2. In a state of advanced war economy when an increase in purchasing power must be avoided or civilian demand must be reduced in favor of defense expenditures, heavy levies on the low income groups may be necessary. Keynes proposal relates to the substitution of compulsory loans for taxes as a means of imposing such levies. Under the stated conditions, his scheme has much merit indeed. However, his proposal is very distinct from the scheme which you advocate. If we shall find it necessary to impose heavy levies on the income groups of say, under $1500, the forced loan method will be a sound way of spreading the hurden. The financing of current bonus payments is an altogether different matter.

3. A sudden decline of defense expenditures at the end of the war (a decline which, in itself, is highly unlikely) may induce a post-war slump, unless counteracted by deficit spending for other purposes. However, it will be more desirable to pay relief to the (then) unemployed, than to redeem bonus payments to former soldiers, independent of their economic status and need.

To increase public obligations unnecessarily at the outset of a period, during which the public debt may well rise up to the 100 billion mark as a result of essential defense financing, would indicate a severe lack of judgment; and this, I submit, quite independent of whether or not you happn to be a "Keynesian." Richard A. Musgrave, Faculty Instructor in Economics.