"A favourite gripe of my father's generation back in the Fifties was that their taxes were being used to pay for the Napoleonic wars.
In truth, it was not a very serious gripe, and certainly not the biggest thing to worry about in those times, but it has a certain resonance.
Politicians today talk about the burden of public debt being passed on to our children and grandchildren. In truth, every generation of taxpayers has had to pay the bills of its predecessors.
Even today, though Napoleon has been taken care of, the Kaiser hasn't. Today's taxpayers may neither know nor care but a small slice of what they hand over to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs every year goes to pay the interest on a couple of billion pounds of debt run up to pay for the First World War and still outstanding.
Have a look some time at the Government securities section on a stock market prices page and locate War Loan. Launched in 1916 it is still going strong. And it is you who is paying the interest.
We did rather better with the Second World War. The last of the millions lent by the US was paid off in 2006."
More: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23955926-debt-isnt-always-bad-we-may-even-learn-to-love-it.do