Friday 22 September 1944 The Govt.'s demobilization plans have been published and seem to be devised as fairly as possible, but there are certain to be plenty of hard cases which will cause the likes of me a lot of trouble later on! Men, who are retained in the forces after the war in Europe, are to be given higher pay which is right and proper — it is estimated that this increase will cost £100 million a year — a lot of money and where it is to come from goodness only knows, and yet I gather that some of [the] press consider that it is a niggardly business. All sense of proportion about the spending of money is gone nowadays — millions mean nothing — ‘nothing is too good for our bairns’, as the Labour people used to say in the Durham C[ounty] C[ouncil]. The idea that we can afford anything and everything after peace is restored is based on the assertion that, if we can spend so much in the war, we can spend just as much in peace. No one seems to realize that because we have to spend so much in war, we must have less to spend when it is over.