been thought to be incredible until it was tried. But we are still in the dark as to whether any body of tax-payers would make sacrifices in order to preserve its country's solvency, to anything like the same extent as for securing victory in war; and it is upon the temper of the tax-payer that taxable capacity in the last resort depends. We are also profoundly ignorant about political conditions in other countries. There was a time when Mexican securities were thought to be first rate, of their class. But they depended on the maintenance of the dictatorship established by President Diaz. When he went the country fell back into anarchy and bankruptcy.
Though the basis of security be the same, however, a very important difference between home and foreign investments has been introduced by the war, and the ungentlemanly manner in which it was waged. Some of us are old enough to remember the confidence that used, in the remote Victorian age, to be felt by British investors in Russian Government securities because of a tradition which told them that all through the Crimean War British investors in Russian bonds punctually received the interest due to them. But in the late war the Governments fought with every possible weapon, and among them the financial one was
