War-time financial problems

124 COMPARATIVE WAR FINANCE

securities. She was selling them in blocks for some
weeks before the war, and Germany, of course, has
done everything that she could in order to induce
neutrals, during the course of the war, to buy securities
from her and to subscribe to her War Loans. Never-
theless, it cannot have been possible for Germany
to carry out these operations to anything like the
extent that we have, partly because her credit has
not been nearly so good, partly because her ruthless
and brutal conduct of the war has turned the senti-
ment of the world against her, and partly because
the measures that we have taken to check remit-
tances and transfers of money have not been alto-
gether ineffective. On this side of the problem
Germany has therefore an advantage over us, that
her war finance, pitiful as it has been, has, not
owing to any virtue of hers, but owing to force of
circumstances, raised her a problem which is to a
great extent internal, and will not have altered her
relation to the finance of other countries so much
as has been the case with regard to ourselves. We
also have to remember that the process of demobilisa-
tion will be far simpler, quicker, and cheaper for
Germany than for us. Even if the war ended
to-morrow the German Army would not have far
to go in order to get home, and we hope that by
the time the war ends the German Army will all
have been driven back into its own country and so
will be on its own soil, only requiring to be redis-
tributed to its peace occupations. Our Army will
have to be fetched home, firstly, over Continental
railways, probably battered into a condition of