l>ccemDer ^j, 1915. 
LAMD AiND VV A T E K 
THE FORUM. 
A Commentary on Present-day Problems. 
THE \eiiest amateurs of psychology 
amongst us can draw sound comfort 
from the tenor of Dr. Helfferich's 
recent speech on the relative strength 
of German and British finance. It was the speech 
of a desperately anxious and impotently irritable 
man. That invincible stupidity of the British 
race, which has for so long been a cardinal German 
doctrine, e\'illy communicating itself to her more 
intelligent Allies, has so con-upted them that they 
cannot see that the game is up. They obstinately 
refuse to admit German victoiy as they maliciously 
and jealously refused to admit German superiority. 
\Miich all makes for gaiety and encouragement. 
Meanwhile our own financial thinkers with less 
humour but more candour have issued a serious 
warning to us in terms which admit of no misunder- 
standing, if only they receive the consideration 
which is their due. While every German is con- 
scious of the strain of the war in the actual experi- 
ence of straitened circumstances and perceived 
shortages of food and raw materials, together with 
the profoundest anxiety about future supplies, 
this anxiety in England is confined to the few who 
are competent to analyse and understand the 
balance-sheets of the warring nations. There is 
little enough indeed to bring this particular matter 
home to the perhaps rather sluggish imagination 
ot the peoples of these islands. We see a world 
going round very much as usual ; with notably 
less poverty of the kind officially recognised as 
such than was usual in pre-war days ; with labour 
in receipt of considerably higher nominal, and, 
generally speaking, of appreciably higher real 
wages. Seeing that the wiseacres foretold very 
widespread distress perhaps this pleasant falsifica- 
tion of their prophecies has helped to lull us into a 
dangerously false security. , . 
The plain facts arc that the actual financial 
position of Great Britain (since the Canadian con- 
cession which may create a happy precedent, we 
may add of Greater Britain) is so far sound. It 
owes little to such sleight-of-hand as manipulated 
the so brightly advertised German loans, cf which 
not alone our own, but neutral bankers refuse to 
accept the roseate German estimate. Germany 
can boast, as Dr. Helfferich boasted, that through 
agents in America she can reduce the amount 
of our loan there ; but she cannot even attempt 
to raise a loan there herself. We are still a 
solvent nation. There is still a balance of unre- 
deemed foreign securities in our favour, though a 
great proportion of these is unrealisable at the 
present time ; we are not yet reduced to borrowing 
expensively and precariously on the lender's mere 
calculation of our continued ability to pay. But 
wc are living on capital at an absolutely alarming 
rate and our borrowing powers are necessarily 
weakened. It is soberly estimated that the trade 
balance against us is between (500,000.000 and 
£600.000,000 a year. Germany, largely unable 
to import, makes a virtue and a relative strength 
of her enforced economy ; makes it out of her very 
weakness. 
As plain men we are concerned with the plain 
inference that the continued national extravagance 
may spell for us national disaster. A fine ending 
to the agonies of our soldiers, the resolution of our 
people, if we are to hazard the victory which lies 
without our grasp because of the lack of true 
imagination or of the self-denial to reduce our way 
of living ! It is imperative we should free ourselves 
to realise that a victory in the battle-field cannot 
be won without heioism and bitter sacrifice, so 
neither can this victory in the economic field on 
which the liigher victory depends, be won without 
great renunciations and extreme discomforts. We 
others who do not fight ought not to wish that it 
should be otherwise. 
It is quite true that upon the Govenmient 
devolves the main responsibility of taking the 
heroic measures. Legislative restrictions in the 
drink trade have produced a very much greater 
reduction in the consumption of alcohol, than the 
self denying ordinances of individuals acting on a 
developed sense of dut}-. Yet no one is free to 
infer that his own effort^ and influence may be 
inculpably withheld. The aggregate of individual 
sacrifices is not negligible. The spread of even the 
most obvious economic platitudes by private zeal 
is eminently helpful. It will increase the individual 
efforts by precept and by example ; it will serve to 
stimulate active opinion to demand, and prepare 
sluggish opinion to accept, such drastic measures 
of taxation and restriction as are nece?sarj\ 
No good purpose is served by underestimating 
the difficulties of the Government, and we essay 
no exercise in the popular mode of representing the 
Cabinet as a committee of somnolent imbeciles, 
waiting for the authentic instructions of heaven- 
prompted leader and letter writers. It is a gross 
but a true fact that a nation, as an army, fights 
on its stomach. It also must laugh. Labour is 
often condemned in these days as extravagant. 
It is working at a forced pace and for exceptionally 
long hours. , It should not be too severely blamed 
for its gramophones and cinemas. London is a gay 
enough city in these times, restaurants and theatres 
well filled. It is not to be represented as fiddling 
while the Empire blows up, but as in the main 
trying to give its soldiers as good a time as possible. 
But it may well be that we have reached a 
crisis of our fate when a little grimmer reahsation 
of the stiff fight ahead of us will be more wholesome 
than the gay air we have, to our health's and 
spirit's benefit, hitherto contrived to maintain. 
It is in our favour that we have a great reserve of 
sanity to fall back upon. 
We civilians need to think Iti terms of this 
simple proposition ; we must each of us try to 
produce more in the way of goods or services than 
we consume and put the surplus at the disposal of 
the State. . If we ava consuming more tlian we 
produce we are helping to lose the war. There is 
a sort of negative economy, perhaps more easily 
grasped than practised, that of consuming 
and spending as little as possible on food, drink, 
II 
