In olden times, when war was a
gentlemanly business, trade and finance were very little interrupted by
it. At the time of the Crimean War the Russian Government punctually
paid the interest due on Russian loans to English holders and thereby
established a prestige amongst English investors which was cherished for
several decades. Now that nations have taken to going to war with tooth
and nail, throwing their whole available population into the field and
using every possible device, military, commercial, and financial, to
beat their enemies, any such pleasant decencies as paying money due from
one country to another in the shape of interest or otherwise have been
abandoned. When the war is over it is possible that investors will
remember this fact to a certain extent and will be more chary than they
were before of investing their money abroad, at any rate in any country
with which there is the remotest possibility of our being involved in
war.
War has also shown the great inconvenience that arises when the mutual
dependence of nations one on another for certain products leaves them
crippled because international exchange is interrupted. International
trade and finance, in their full and free development, have been shown
to depend on the assumption that peace is secure. Unless the present war
should be so ended as to secure peace for all time, it seems likely that
all nations will aim at being able to rely, at least for the essentials
of life and of defence, on home production or on a supply from countries
with which war may be regarded as impossible.
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