some way with currency.

Sooner or later, and probably in all cases before 1917, all the
belligerents will be forced to adopt inconvertible paper money for their
internal uses. There will be British assignats or greenbacks. It will
seem to many financial sentimentalists almost as though Great Britain
were hauling down a flag when the sovereign, which has already
disappeared into bank and Treasury coffers, is locked up there and
reserved for international trade. But Great Britain has other sentiments
to consider than the finer feelings of bankers and the delicacies of
usury. The pound British will come out of this war like a company out of
a well-shelled trench--attenuated.

Depreciation of the currency means, of course, a continuing rise in
prices, a continuing writing off of debt. If labour has any real grasp
of its true interests it will not resent this. It will merely insist
steadfastly on a proper adjustment of its wages to the new standard. On
that point, however, it will be better to write later....

Let us see how far we have got in this guessing. We have considered
reasons that seem to point to the destruction of a great amount of old
property and old debt, and the creation of a great volume of new debt
before the end of the war, and we have adopted the ideas that currency
will probably have depreciated more and more and prices risen right up
to the very end.

There will be by that time a general habit of saving throughout the
community, a habit more firmly established perhaps in the propertied
than in the wages-earning class. People will be growing accustomed to a
dear and insecure world. They will adopt a habit of caution; become