ort if we apply the
rough test of the proportion of the cost of war borne out of taxation
and compare our performance with the results achieved by our ancestors
in the Napoleonic and Crimean wars.

If we have done better than France, Italy, Russia and Germany in this
respect, it must also be remembered that the financial prestige which
these countries had to maintain was not nearly so great and well
established as ours, with the possible exception of France; and
France, being exposed to the ravages of a ruthless invader, was in a
position which put special obstacles in the way of the canons of sound
finance.

If, then, there are certain dangers that threaten our financial
position when the war is over, we must remember, on the other hand,
that the war has already done a great deal to maintain our financial
prestige and raise it to a height at which it never stood before.

When the war began we were expected to finance the Allies, to keep the
seas clear and put a small Expeditionary Force to support the left
flank of the French Army, and to do these things during a contest
which was expected by the consensus of expert opinion to last not more
than a few months. All these things we accomplished, and we were
the only Power at war which did actually accomplish all that it was
expected and asked to do. More than that, we also undertook a great
task which was not in our programme; we created a great army on a
Continental scale, and, at the same time, continued to carry out the
other tasks which had been assigned to us.

All these things we did, and that we should have done them was
evidence of economic strength and adaptability which have astonished
the world. To have financed the Allies and ourselves as long as we did
would have been comparatively easy if our population could have been
left at work to turn out the stuff and services, the provision of
which are implied by financing; but for us to have been able to do it
and at the same time to improvise an army which is now consistently
and regularly beating the Germans is an achievement which will
inevitably raise the world's opinion of our economic strength, on
which financial prestige is ultimately based.

But, as it has been said, in discussing this question we have to look
at it all the time from the relative point of view. How will our
prestige be when the war is over, not as compared with what it was
before the war, but as compared with what any other rival in an