Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy #1)

by Ken Follett

‘It’s not just the newspapers,’ Bernie said. ‘It’s the money.’ Bernie paid a lot of attention to government finance, which was odd in a man who had never had more than a few shillings. Ethel saw an opportunity to bring him out of his mood, and said: ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Before the war, our government used to spend about half a million pounds a day on everything – the army, courts and prisons, education, pensions, running the colonies, everything.’ ‘So much!’ She smiled at him affectionately. ‘That’s the kind of statistic my father always knew.’ He drank his cocoa, then said: ‘Guess how much we spend now.’ ‘Double that? A million a day? It sounds impossible.’ ‘You’re nowhere near. The war costs five million pounds a day. That’s ten times the normal cost of running the country.’ Ethel was shocked. ‘Where does the money come from?’ ‘That’s the problem. We borrow it.’ ‘But the war has been going on for more than two years. We must have borrowed . . . nearly four thousand million pounds!’ ‘Something like that. Twenty-five years’ normal expenditure.’ ‘How will we ever pay it back?’ ‘We can never pay it back. A government that tried to bring in taxes sufficient to repay the loan would cause a revolution.’ ‘So what will happen?’ ‘If we lose the war, our creditors – mainly Americans – will go bankrupt. And if we win, we’ll make the Germans pay. “Reparations” is the word they use.’ ‘How will they manage it?’ ‘They will starve. But nobody cares what happens to the losers. Anyway, the...