Nelson's history of the war. Vol. XI., The struggle for the Dvina, and the great invasion of Serbia

THE POLITICAL SITUATION. 79:

were now asked to advance to Britain for a time the money to buy the food and war stores which they could export to her. The proposal, in short, was to make of the Empire a unit for finance, as it had become a unit for the other aspects of

war.

* “Each part of the Empire is under a different Government ; each possesses a separate financial system. Its great wealth is, so to speak, stored in separate reservoirs—a British, a Canadian, an Australian, an Indian reservoir. The British Government can by its taxation and loans only pump the money and goods it requires out of its own reservoir ; the Canadian and Australian Governments only from theirs. If the British reservoir is running low, then it is only the other Governments which can give it or lend it more supplies. It is worth while to be clear as to the consequences of this position. The food products, the raw materials, the munitions of war, which England receives from the different parts of the Empire, are invaluable to her, but so long as she has to pay for them in cash she is no better off financially than if they came from neutrals. It makes no difference to the British Treasury whether it has to pay $15 for a shell to an American or a Canadian manufacturer, or to an English miller whether he pays $1 a bushel for wheat to Australia or the Argentine. The British Treasury and the British miller no doubt prefer to buy from the Canadian manufacturer and the Australian farmer, so as to keep the money in the Empire. But to the British taxpayer and the British consumer the result is identical. In truth, the great wealth of the British Dominions over the seas, while potentially of enormous value, is of use in the present war only in so far as it is employed on its objects. And it can only be so employed to the extent that the different parts of the Empire either meet out of their own resources their own cost of the war, or lend money out of those resources to the British Government, or, in other words, sell them their exports on credit, just as the United States by lending £100,000,000 is selling to France and England its goods to that extent on credit.”’— The Round Table, December IQI5.