to pay any price, her finance is a comparatively simple business. Even
now, when America has assumed the duty of financing a large number of
Allies impoverished by three years of war which have been enriching
her, she is still simplifying the problem by restricting her advances
to the payment for goods bought in America.

That New York will be greatly strengthened by the war, which has
brought masses of American securities back to the country of origin
and has put into the hands of American bankers and investors large
blocks of European promises to pay, is as clear as noonday; but
whether when the war is over New York will care to be bothered much
with problems of international finance remains to be seen. In the
first place, the claims of her own country upon her financial
resources will be insatiable and imperative, In the second place, the
business of international finance is carried out on very finely cut
terms; and the Americans being accustomed to the fat rates of profit
which business at home has given them may not care to devote much
attention to the international market, in which the risks are big,
the turnover is enormous and the profits very finely cut. It has
been remarked by a shrewd observer that the Americans will never do
business for a thirty-second.

In the third place, it must be remembered that the geographical
position of London is more favourable than that of New York as a world
centre, as the world is at present constituted. England, anchored off
the coast of Europe, is clearly marked as the depôt for the entrepôt
trade of the Old and New Worlds. New York is clearly marked as the
centre for the trade of the Western hemisphere, and it is likely
enough that New York and London, acting together as the financial
chiefs of the two hemispheres, may be gradually united into what is