ITS LESSONS AND ITS WARNINGS 87 



In a Paper read before the Royal Statistical 

 Society on March 16th, 1915, by Mr. Edgar 

 Cramond, a well-known financial authority, it 

 was stated that the wealth of the United King- 

 dom was 16,500,000,000, and the national 

 yearly income 2,140,000,000. 



These statistics are confirmed by other great 

 financial authorities. Sir Francis Mowatt, for 

 example, who was Financial Secretary to the 

 Treasury in 1909, estimated the annual income 

 of the nation at 2,000,000,000, increasing 

 steadily by between 200 and 300 millions a year. 



Mr. G. Flux, in his Introduction to the " British 

 Census of Production," estimates the National 

 Income at the same amount. 



The imagination cannot grasp the meaning of 

 these statistics ; but they represent in figures 

 the vast resources of the United Kingdom. If 

 the statistics are accepted even as approximately 

 correct, it is evident that the resources of the 

 country are sufficient for land purposes as well 

 as for war purposes. The difference between 

 the two expenditures is that while war expendi- 

 ture is unproductive and for the most part is lost 

 to the country, that on the land is reproductive 

 in the highest degree ; land being an asset of the 



