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LET us call a spade a spade. Let us not call it a cake slicer or a surgeon's blade or a laser beam. It is a spade; and the thing we call neutrality is not neutrality. It is defence at someone else's expense and, historically, not necessarily a bad or unjustifiable thing either.

Most of us would prefer to have the little costs of getting through life paid for by some bogy else; if the Government said that I seemed a very decent fellow altogether, so decent that I'd no longer have to pay taxes towards the upkeep of the State, I could insist that I pay tax at the full and exorbitant rate it exacts from those within the tax net, or I could say, Thanks Very Much, and Exit, Grinning. There is a third option which is; not so obvious. It is to accept the offer of taxlessness, and not to say thanks, but rather to declare, I decline to pay tax on moral reasons because I am an ethically superior person.