THE FINANCIAL HISTOR BRITAIN, 1914–1 BY FRANK L. McVEY President, University of Kentu NEW YORK OXFORD UNIVERSITY AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 WEST 32N LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE, 1918 EDITOR'S PREFACE President McVey's study is one of the series of preliminary war studies planned by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to assist in showing our own people some of the early experiences, policies, and effects of the war. It sets forth the financial experience of Great Britain from the beginning of the war to the spring of 1918. The attention of the student of British efforts and experience will be arrested at once by several important points in the story. He will be struck first with the immensity of the burden which the British people have voluntarily assumed in defense of their empire, their ideals and their international obligations. If before the war anyone had prophesied that even so wealthy a people as the British could or would submit to war expenditures on so stupendous a scale, he would have been laughed at. A second point that will impress itself is that in spite of the arguments of Block and writers of his school, the mounting expense of modern war is not, after all, a very strong or primary deterrent of conflict. The third point which will arrest attention is the financial strength and resourcefulness of the British Empire. Her far-flung battle line is paralleled by her far-flung commercial and financial line of influence and power. As her children have gathered from all quarters of the world to her defense in battle, so her financial resources have come from equally diverse and distant quarters to support them. Without her foreign investments to draw on Britain would undoubtedly have been seriously crippled before this. Still again, one will be struck with the fact that this burden of taxation has been borne cheerfully, in accordance with the determination of the people and their government to pursue their purpose in the war to a conclusion. Of course, much of the from the United States. British financial strength has come This was true even before we were iii 600260 |