War-time financial problems

• AFTER-WAR SAVING 9

have to be made relatively more attractive than it
was before the war.

If, then, capital can only be created by saving,
how far will the war have helped towards its more
plentiful production ?

Here, again, we are faced with a psychological
question which can only be answered by those who
are bold enough to forecast the state of mind in which
the majority of people will find themselves when the
war is over. If there is a great reaction, and every-
body's one desire is to throw this nightmare of war
off their chests and go back to the times as they were
before it happened, then all that the war has taught
us about the production of capital will have been
wasted. But I rather doubt whether this will be so.
Saving merely means the diversion of a certain pro-
portion of the output of industry into the further
equipment of industry. The war has taught us
lessons which, if we use them aright, will help us to
increase enormously the output of industry. So that
if these lessons are used aright, and industry does
not waste its time in squabbles over the sharing of
its product, its output may be 30 great that a com-
paratively smaller amount of saving in relation to
the total output may produce a larger amount of
capital than was made available in days before the
war. There is a further point, that the war has
taught a great many people who never saved at all
to save a good deal. It was estimated before the
war that we in this country were saving about four
hundred millions a year. This figure was necessarily
a guess, and must be taken for what it is worth,