international trade, the transaction may be considered as part of
international finance. When they are drawn on behalf of foreign
countries, trading with other foreigners, or using the credit to lend to
other foreigners, the connection with international finance is obvious.
They are readily taken all over the world, because all over the world
there are people who have payments to make to England owing to the wide
distribution of our trade, and it has long been England's boast that
bills of exchange drawn on London firms are the currency of
international commerce and finance.

Some people tell us that this commanding position of the English bill
in the world's markets is in danger of being lost owing to the present
war: in the first place because America is gaining wealth rapidly, while
we are shooting away our savings, and also because the Germans will make
every endeavour to free themselves from dependence on English credit for
the conduct of their trade. Certainly this danger is a real one, but it
does not follow that we shall not be able to meet it and defeat it. If
the war teaches us to work hard and consume little, so that when peace
comes we shall have a great volume of goods to export, there is no
reason why the bill on London should not retain much if not all of its
old prestige and supremacy in the marts of the world. For we must always
remember that finance is only the handmaid of industry. She is often a
pert handmaid who steals her mistress's clothes and tries to flaunt
before the world as the mistress, and so she sometimes imposes on many
people who ought to know better, who think that finance is an
all-powerful influence. Finance is a mighty influence, but it is a mere
piece of machinery which assists, quickens, and lives on production.
The men who make and grow things, and carry them from the place where
they are made and grown to the place where they are wanted, these are
the men who furnish the raw material of finance, without which it would