all their interests urge them to want peace, would never be parties to
intrigues for a peace that was premature or ill-judged.

Perhaps I have a weakness for financiers, but if so it is entitled to
some respect, because it is based on closer knowledge of them than is
owned by most of their critics. For years it was my business as a City
journalist, to see them day by day; and this daily intercourse with
financiers has taught me that the popular delusion that depicts them as
hard, cruel, ruthless men, living on the blood and sweat of humanity,
and engulfed to their eyebrows in their own sordid interests, is about
as absurd a hallucination as the stage Irishman. Financiers are quite
human--quiet, mild, good-natured people as a rule, many of them spending
much time and trouble on good works in their leisure hours. What they
want as financiers is plenty of good business and as little as possible
disturbance in the orderly course of affairs. Such a cataclysm as the
present war could only terrify them, especially those with interests in
every country of the world. When war comes, especially such a war as
this, financing in its ordinary and most profitable sense has to put up
its shutters. Nobody can come to London now for loans except the
British, or French, Governments, or, occasionally, one of our colonies.
Any other borrower is warned off the field by a ruthless Committee whose
leave has to be granted before dealings in new securities are allowed on
the Stock Exchange. But when the British Government borrows, there are
no profits for the rank and file of financiers. No underwriting is
necessary, and the business is carried out by the Bank of England. The
commissions earned by brokers are smaller, and the whole City feels that
this is no time for profit-making, but for hard and ill-paid work, with
depleted staffs, to help the great task of financing a great war. The
Stock Exchange is half empty and nearly idle. It is tied and bound by
all sorts of regulations in its dealings, and its members have probably