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.]