of affairs will have been modified by the sales that we are making now
in New York of the American Railroad bonds and shares that represented
the savings that we had put into America in former years, and by the
extent of our war borrowings in America, and elsewhere, if we widen the
circle of our creditors. The effect of this will be that we shall owe
America for interest on the money that it is lending us, and that it
will owe us less interest, owing to the blocks of its securities that it
is buying back. Against this we shall be able to set debts due to us
from our Allies, but if our borrowings and sales of securities exceed
our lendings as the war goes on, we shall thereby be poorer. Our power
as a creditor country will be less, until by hard work and strict saving
we have restored it. This we can very quickly do, if we remember and
apply the lessons that war is teaching us about the number of people
able to work, whose capacity was hitherto left fallow, that this country
contained, and also about the ease with which we can dispense, when a
great crisis makes us sensible, with many of the absurdities and
futilities on which much of our money, and productive capacity, used to
be wasted.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: "United Netherlands," chap. xxxii.]




CHAPTER V


THE BENEFITS OF INTERNATIONAL FINANCE