War-time financial problems

CREATED BY SAVING 5

and very dull. Capital can only be created by
saving.

Saving is such an entirely unpopular virtue that
it seems at first sight a disastrous conclusion to arrive
at, that if we want to increase the supply of capital
it can only be done by stimulating this unattractive
habit; and there is a further question to be asked—
whether it will be necessary or desirable to have a
great increase in the supply of capital. As was
pointed out above, one theory of after-war needs
maintains that the world will be so exhausted by
this great struggle that it will have no enterprise and
no energy left, and that capital will go begging. If
this be so, we need not trouble to inquire as to
whether the supply of capital can be made plentiful.
But I venture to think that this view is very probably
wrong, though it is very dangerous to prophesy con-
cerning the purely psychological question of the
state of mind in which the citizens of the warring
Powers will end the war. It is, however, at least
probable that the prices which are then likely to rule
will stimulate enterprise all over the world; that
every one will see that there is a great work to be
done in getting industry back on to a peace basis,
and a great profit to be made by those who do this
work most successfully, and that the demand for
capital is likely, for some years at least, to clamour
for all that can be produced,

To go back, then, to the statement that only by
saving can capital be created. The man who saves,
instead of spending money on his own enjoyment,
hands it over to some company or Government to be

B