PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 233 



We have been led to believe that the expenditure of the last five years 

 had gone, in part at least, into channels which would leave us with profit- 

 able and realisable investments. Some time will be required to demonstrate 

 this, and we may still hope that the sal© of the national factories will bring 

 some relief to the burden of debt. It may be admitted that the process 

 of ' cleaning up ' is necessarily costly and slow, but it would be satisfactory 

 to be able to record that the 'assets,' whether fixed or floating, had been of 

 sufficient value to pay for their realisation, whereas w© are being fed on the 

 unsubstantial hope, that at some future date vast sums will flow into the 

 Exchequer as the ' surplus stores ' remaining on hand in November 1918 are 

 turned into cash, an.d the various factories sold or put to .some useful purpose. 



A cause of yet greater apprehension is to be found in the fact that new 

 claims are made on the national purse and are accepted with the same apparent 

 light-heartedness and disregard of consequences which mark so many previous 

 acts of those responsible for our expenditure both during the war and before it. 



We must recognise that we could not ask the multitudes of women who 

 came forward to meet the call for munitions of war of various kinds, and for 

 even more direct and active service at home and abroad, to abandon their 

 activities and return to the conditions which satisfied them prior to the war. 

 A like observation applies to the men who accepted the call of the nation and 

 gave up their accustomed work to serve th«ir country at the Front or at 

 some employment at home quite different from that to which they had been 

 used. Some compensation for these sudden changes was no doubt inevitable. 

 The disorganisation of the whole industrial machine made it difficult, if not 

 impossible, to turn these different classes adrift into a world in the chaotic 

 condition into which the war had thrown it. But it does not follow that this 

 compensation should have been given in a way actually to encourage unemploy- 

 ment. Tales, more or less authentic, pass from mouth to mouth indicative of 

 the results of the ill-considered plans adopted to meet the difficulties which 

 were no doubt most serious. The Irish farm labourer, offered a job at 30s., 

 who replied, 'Sure, I'm not likely to work for your honour for 1.?. a week; 

 I'm getting 29s. for doing nothing,' is one of these. The girl typist, paid the 

 quite inadequate wage of 15s., who gave up her work and at once received 

 unemployment pay at 25s., is another. Let us hope that the story of the 

 navvy found smoking under a hedge, and, reproached for his idleness, who 

 rejoined that ' he was engaged in working overtime at Cippenham,' is a fable, 

 but it is of sort in which an unkind world may detect an element of truth. 

 Whether true or not, these observations are of little importance in themselves 

 except as indications of a general tendency to extravagant expenditure which 

 must be checked before the course of our economic existence can return to 

 normal lines. It should be the purpose of all patriotic citizens to accomplish 

 tliat return at the first possible moment. To enable us to do this we must 

 consider what has happened to the world economically since August 1914. 



The first and perhaps most striking change to be noticed is that in these 

 five years an immense quantity of wealth has been destroyed. I have had 

 the sad advantage of paying a visit to the countries where the destruction 

 can be seen. From the Belgian coast to Verdun, over a stretch of country from 

 ten to as much as twenty miles or more in breadth and not less than -WO miles 

 in length, I passed through a land where the effects of modern warfare were 

 painfully' visible. It is impossible to convey to those who have not seen it 

 the extent and completeness of the destruction. For miles every sign of 

 cultivation has disappeared. The trees with which in places the country was 

 covered are represented by dead, unsightly stumps. We were told that 

 these were useless even as firewood. They are so full of morsels of steel that 

 it is impossible to cut them down or saw them up. They must stand till they 

 rot. We passed through the pitiable remains of what the ruined walls and 

 defaced gardens showed to have once been a village. But even more 

 frequently we saw heaps of broken stimes and bricks which, but for a board 

 with a name on it at the side of the road, might have been taken for 

 merely a more stoney and dishevelled piece of country. The epithet lust 

 used "is more appropriate than one who has not been an eye-witness could 

 suppose. The immense quantities of barbed wire which are being gradually 



