will be allowed to have funds of which they are going to make bad use. But as the present dearth is not going to last for ever, it is well that issuing houses and investors should make up their minds about the principles on which money should be lent to Governments, and determine to stick to them.
Lending for war purposes is evidently not a matter to which any economic rules can be applied. One lends to one's own Government when it is at war, because one wants to do everything to help it to win; it chooses to get money from its citizens by loans, and so one subscribes if one can even though one may be convinced that less loans and more taxes would be a sounder and much cheaper way of financing war and that the notion that we can make posterity pay is a pure delusion, even if it were right or wise to do so.[1] If we lend to other Governments when they are at war, we do so because we want to help them to win, and at the same time believe that they will at any rate end the war not too much impoverished to meet the service of the debt. None of these sentiments are amenable to financial reasoning since they depend almost entirely on patriotism or political fancy.
- ↑ See Our Money and the State, by H. Withers, Chapter II.
