problems we have to look for the relative answer and to
consider not whether England has suffered by the war, for it is most
obvious that she has, but whether she will have been found to have
suffered more than any competitor who may threaten her after-war
position.

"Free trade," says our German Jeremiah, "that mighty agent in the
development of England's supremacy, will, in all probability, give
place to protection." We venture to think that it will be recognised
that the Free Trade policy of the past gave us a well-distributed
wealth which was an invaluable weapon in time of war, and that any
attempt to impose import duties when peace comes will be admitted,
even by the most ardent Tariff Reformers, as untimely when there is
likely to be a world-wide scramble for food and raw materials, and the
one object of every nation will be to get them wherever they can and
as cheaply as they can.

If Stock Exchange business will be less, though this does not by any
means follow, there is no reason why it should be relatively less
here than in other centres. As to rates of interest being permanently
higher, the same answer applies. It may be true, but there is no
reason why they should be relatively higher in London than elsewhere;
and, if they are high, it will be because there will be a great demand
for capital, which will mean a great trade expansion; both in the
provision of capital and in meeting the demands of trade expansion
England will be doing what she has done with marked success in the
past and can, if she works in the right way now and after the war, do
again with equal and still greater success.

There is, however, a danger that threatens our financial position
after the war, on the subject of which our German critic is discreetly
silent, because that danger threatens the position of Germany very
much more emphatically. It consists in the way in which our Government
is at present meeting the needs of war finance, not by compelling
economy on the civilian population through taxation and borrowing
direct from investors, but by manufacturing currency for the purposes
of the war by means of the printing press and the banking machinery.
The effect of this policy is seen in the enormous mass of Treasury
notes with which the country has been flooded. Their total is now
nearly 180 millions or perhaps 100 millions more than the gold which
they were originally designed to replace.

It is also to be seen in the great inc