This decision taken, and enforced on the reopening of the Banks, scarcely any credit establishment took any advantage of the Moratorium declared by the Government. In Uruguay the situation proved easier on account of a comparative absence of the complication of securities based on inflated values. Here again the Uruguayan showed his superiority in the matter of cautiously prudent finance over his more enthusiastically volatile over-river cousin. This observation notwithstanding, it is now clear that although a severe financial pinch is still felt in both countries, the Argentine and Uruguayan ships of State are both fully trimmed to enable them to ride over bad financial weather, the first shock of which was the most perilous to meet and needed the most prompt and intelligent handling. In the result neither country will eventually be any worse for the moral effects of having suddenly been left to its own resources. Meanwhile land, especially, perhaps, in Argentina, offers an opportunity to Capital such as, as has been said elsewhere in these pages, everyone for humanitarian reasons must hope will never occur again. Given knowledge of just where and what to buy, large fortunes await those with courage and capital to purchase either town lots or agricultural and pastoral land in either Republic; in Argentina preferably for earlier realization. Once peace is declared, and even before, it needs little imagination to perceive the wealth to be secured by the agricultural and live-stock produce on markets suddenly deprived of much of the usual output of sources of cereal supply as Russia and Canada, through withdrawal of labour for military purposes, and faced with an enormously increased demand for meat and grain caused by the necessary shortage of production over all War-infected areas. In fact Argentina and Uruguay are likely soon to experience the truth of the proverb, “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good,” and they are among the very few countries of the world about the commercial conditions of which, after the war, it is pretty safe to prophesy in the direction of a prompt return, in an enhanced degree, to their normal course of ever-growing prosperity. Always with the factor of population and consequent sufficiency of agricultural labour being reserved for consideration after the event. A large and very serious reservation which cannot safely be lost sight of by anyone desirous of land speculation in either of the two countries under discussion.