earnings of
financiers. These views, expressed in practical legislation, might
have the most serious effects not only upon England's financial
supremacy but also on the industrial activity which that financial
supremacy does so much to maintain and foster.

What, after the war, will be the most important need, from the
material point of view, for the inhabitants of this country? However
the war may end, and whatever may happen between now and the end of
it, there can be only one answer to this question, and that answer
is greatly increased production. The war has already diminished our
capital resources to the extent of the whole amount that we have
raised by borrowing abroad, that is to say, by pledging the production
of our existing capital, and by selling to foreign countries the
foreign securities in which our capitalists had invested during
the previous century. No one knows the extent to which our capital
resources have been impaired by these two processes, but it may be
guessed at as somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1500 millions; that
is to say, about 10 per cent. of a liberal estimate of the total
accumulated property of the country at the beginning of the war. To
this direct diminution in our capital resources we have to add the
impossibility, which has existed during the war, of maintaining our
factories and industrial equipment in first-class working order by
expenditure on account of depreciation of plant. On the other side
of the balance-sheet we can put a large amount of new machinery
introduced, which may or may not be useful for industrial purposes
after the war; greatly improved methods of organisation, the effect of
which may or may not be spoilt when the war is over by uncomfortable
relations between Capital and Labour; and our loans to Allies and
Dominions, some of which may have to be written off, and most of which
will return us no interest for some time to come, or will at first pay
us interest if we lend our debtors the money to pay it with. What the
country will need, above all, on the material side, is an abundant
revenue, which can only be produced by vigorous and steady effort in
industry, which, again, can only be forthcoming if the machinery of
credit and finance is given the fullest possible freedom to provide
every one who wants to engage in industry and increase the output of
the country with the financial facilities, without which nothing can
be done.

Is it, then, wise at such a t