are an article that can almost be "sold on a Sunday." But in the midst
of this roar of humming trade, finance, and especially international
finance, lies stricken and still gasping from the shock of war. When war
comes, the price of all property shrivels. This was well known to
Falstaff, who, when he brought the news of Hotspur's rebellion, said
"You may buy land now as cheap as stinking mackerel," To most financial
institutions, this shrivelling process in the price of their securities
and other assets, brings serious embarrassment, for there is no
corresponding decline in their liabilities, and if they have not founded
themselves on the rock of severest prudence in the past, their solvency
is likely to be imperilled. Finance knew that it must suffer. The story
has often been told, and though never officially confirmed, it has at
least the merit of great probability, that in 1911 when the Morocco
crisis made a European war probable, the German Government was held back
by the warning of its financiers that war would mean Germany's ruin. It
is more than likely that a similar warning was given in July, 1914, but
that the war party brushed it aside. And now that war is upon us, we are
being warned that high finance is intriguing for peace. Mr. Edgar
Crammond, a distinguished economist and statistician, published an
article in the _Nineteenth Century_ of September, 1915, entitled "High
Finance and a Premature Peace," calling attention to this danger and
urging the need for guarding against it. First too bellicose and now too
pacific, High Finance is buffeted and spat upon by men of peace and men
of war with a unanimity that must puzzle it. It can hardly err on both
sides, but of the two accusers I think that Mr. Crammond is much more
likely to be right. But my own personal opinion is that both these
accusers are mistaken, that the financiers never wanted war, that if
(which I beg to doubt) diplomacy conducted in their interests produced
the war, that was because diplomacy misunderstood and bungled their
interests, and that now that the war is upon us, the financiers, though