It is true that we shall have lost an appalling number of the best of our manhood, and this is a loss that is irreparable in many of its aspects.  But from the purely material point of view we may set against it the great increase in the productive power of those that are left behind, through the lessons that the war has taught us in using the store of available energy that was idle among us before.  We shall have learnt to work as we never worked before, and we shall have learnt that many of the things on which we used to waste our money and energy were unworthy of us at all times and especially at a time of national crisis.  If we can only recognize that the national crisis will go on after the war, and will go on until we have made this old country civilized in the real sense of the word, that is, free from destitution and the vice and dirt and degradation and disease that go with it, then our power of recovery after the war will be illimitable, and we shall go forward to a new standard of wealth and national duty that will leave the dingy ideals of the nineteenth century behind us like a bad dream.  This may seem somewhat irrelevant to the question of International Finance, but it is not so.  We led the way in spreading our capital over the world, with little or no regard for the consequences of this policy on the condition of our population at home.  We have now, in the great regeneration that this war has brought, and will bring in still greater measure, to show that we can still make and save capital faster than ever, by working harder and spending our money on improving our heritage, instead of on frivolity and self-indulgence.  Then we shall still be free to lend money to borrowers who will use it well, and at the same time have plenty to spare for wise use at home in clearing the blots off our civilization.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 9:  Written on New Year’s Eve, 1915.]

INDEX

ACCEPTANCES, of banks and firms. 26, 36
America, as international financier, 73;
  trade expansion of, helped by England, 85
Armament firms and bad finance, 135, 136

BANK OF ENGLAND, position of, 31. 32;
  weekly return of, 33
Banks, bills of exchange held by, 26 seq.;
  functions of, 35 seq.;
  money deposited with, 25 seq.;
  specimen balance sheet of, 35
Bearer securities, 54
Bill-brokers, 37, 38
Bills of exchange, meaning of, 26 seq.;
  on London, popularity of, 29, 30;
  uses of, 39, 40
Bonds, description of, 54
Bowley, Dr., on specialization, 156
Brailsford, Mr., on Egypt and finance, 99
Brazil, financial embarrassments of. 71;
  funding scheme for, 72