War-time financial problems

THE SWINDLED INVESTOR 13

promotion, so that he can rely on any savings that
he puts into industry having at least a fair chance of
yielding him a fair reward. This subject is too vast
to enter into at present, but it is one to which those
who are responsible for the management of our
financial affairs cannot give too much attention.
Every time the real investor is swindled out of his
money there is more than a chance that he will look
upon all forms of saving as a folly to be left to the
credulous. It is easy to say that it was his own fault,
that he ought to have been more careful, or consulted
a better broker; but he will, with equal ease, retort
that if honest financiers knew their business better,
they would have long ago made things easier for the
ignorant investor to know whether he was putting
his money into genuine enterprise or throwing it
down a sink.

Like all other divagations on the subject of what
may happen in the future, this attempt to forecast
has necessarily consisted of " dim glimpses into the
obvious/' as the undergraduate said of Jowett's
sermon. All that we can be sure of is this : that if
the great opportunities that will lie open to mankind
at the end of the war are rightly used, if we use its
lessons to increase our production, restrict our
frivolous consumption, and put a larger proportion
of our larger production into stimulating production
still further, there ought to be a great increase in the
amount of capital available to supply the great
increase which may be expected in the amount of
capital demanded. The fact that the chief nations
of the world will have enormous debts on which to