ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

116

moves an element of uncertainty from theMoney Markets and Stock Exchanges of theworld, and since French importers and manu-facturers need hesitate no longer, a good deal ofpurchasing power, which has been lying idle,may be returned to active employment. M.Poincare has, therefore, done something—per-haps for the first time in his career—to makethe rest of us feel more cheerful.

It is interesting to compare the severalfortunes of France and Great Britain over thepost-war period. In Great Britain our author-ities have never talked such rubbish as theirFrench colleagues or offended so grossly againstall sound principles of finance. But GreatBritain has come out of the transitional periodwith the weight of her war debt aggravated, herobligations to the United States unabated, anddeflationary finance still in the ascendant; withthe heavy burden of taxes appropriate to theformer and a million unemployed as the out-come of the latter. France, on the other hand,has written down her internal war debt by four-fifths, and has persuaded her Allies to let her offmore than half of her external debt; and nowshe is avoiding the sacrifices of Deflation. Yetshe has contrived to do this without the slight-est loss of reputation for conservative financeand capitalist principles. The Bank of France emerges much stronger than the Bank of Eng-land; and everyone still feels that France is thelast stronghold of tenacious saving and the rentiermentality. Assuredly it does not pay to be good.