The Progress of the World. 



505 



which in strife and destruction had carried all before it. 

 Face to face with this manifestation, who was the man 

 who was bold enough to say that martial virtues did not 

 play a vital part in the health and honour of every 

 people? Who was the man who was vain enough to 

 suppose that the long antagonisms of history and of 

 time could in all circumstances be adjusted by the smooth 

 and superficial conventions of politicians and ambas- 

 sadors? ,^, . , 



Inere is, however, one 



The Peril of the 

 Americaa Bond. 



crumb of comfort for 

 Mr. Norman Angell and 

 his theory, and, curi- 

 ously enough, it arises in consequence 

 of the present 

 war. The out- 

 break of hos- 

 tilities was 

 preceded by a 

 remarkable 

 panic upon the 

 Bourses of 

 Europe. The 

 bonds of all 

 i n t ere s t e d 

 States fell tens 

 of points at a 

 time. Sellers 

 could find no- 

 body to buy, 

 and in Paris 

 especially 

 those who 

 wished to re- 

 alise capital 

 were driven to 

 sell their 

 American rail- 

 way bonds. 

 This panic on 

 the Bourse had no real effect upon any 

 of the combatants, since, although the 

 market quotation of the various bonds 

 showed a great fall, this would only affect 

 Servia, Bulgaria, or any other country 

 if it happened that it was necessary to 

 borrow more money during the time 

 of panic. The sudden fall was rather 

 a punishment of the investor or 



Panic in the F 



speculator in countries outside the 

 war area, and thus the punishment 

 of the Bourse for the making of 

 war, of which so much has been 

 spoken and written, fell upon the 

 innocent rather than upon the guilty. 

 On the Continent, in any case, the 

 great result of the panic has been 

 to encourage the French and German 

 investor to buy more and more American 



railway bonds 

 rather than 

 securities. The 

 American rail- 

 ways have not 

 been slow to 

 realise this 

 fact, and to 

 push the sale 

 of their bonds. 

 But it is well 

 that a word of 

 caution should 

 be offered, lest 

 this tendency 

 lead to an un- 

 due proportion 

 of the savings 

 of any one 

 nation being 

 invested in 

 purely Ameri- 

 can stocks. For 

 such stocks 

 are, and must 



ranch Bourse. alwayS bc, 



"under the influence of the great 

 American financiers who can depress 

 or raise their value to an extra- 

 ordinary degree with comparatively 

 little effort. Nor is this to be wondered 

 at when we reflect that two men, 

 Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan and ]\Ir. John 

 D. Rockefeller, control 36 per cent, of 

 the actual wealth of the United States, 



