Nevertheless, owing to the political side issues involved, Russia,
Germany, and the United States also all insisted on taking part in the
business of lending money to China. China was compelled to borrow more
money than it wanted, so that all these so-called civilized Powers could
share in the operation, and the absurdity of the position was increased
by the fact that some at least of the Powers which lent the money would
have had to borrow it somewhere before they could do so.
This freedom with which England has furnished financial resources to the
rest of the world is sometimes called in question as having had, or
being likely to have, bad effects upon the activity of production at
home. It is quite clear that the progress of international commerce and
the division of labour among nations by which commodities of all kinds
have been very greatly cheapened could not have been carried out if
England and other comparatively far developed countries had not supplied
the necessary capital for the development of the relatively backward
parts of the earth. If English money had not gone into building railways
in America, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and all over the world, and
supplying capital to the farmers and others who opened up these
countries, food could not have been nearly as cheap as it is or as it
was before the war, and clothes and other necessaries of life would have
been at a very different price.
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