We are, as a nation, recovering, in fact, becoming slowly convalescent, from the effects of war-time and post-war inflation of money and credit. We have realized that sound finance and the balancing of the Budget are the necessary foundations of prosperity. Other European nations are still enjoying the temporary delusive prosperity that can always be obtained by inflation and dishonest finance. To carry the economic argument one stage further, we must realize that the State can only carry non-producers to the extent to which industry can obtain a surplus, after providing for wages, interest, replacements, etc. The State cannot, by any arrangement of taxation, loans or administrative activity, provide an artificial standard of life, which is not earned by human individual activity. There is, therefore, urgent need for education in finance, in both its public and private aspects. Some of us are learning the lesson by the bitter experience of high rates and taxes, others by the hardships of unemployment. But out of this experience much good is coming. We are learning the true and permanent bases of national prosperity. The dangers of Great Britain to-day are not to be found in Red Revolution. Democracy will fail, if it fails at all, from a lack of understanding of economics and finance. Politicians without scruple or foresight may hold out bribes of immediate material advantages, trusting to some juggling of figures to enable them to redeem their promises. During the war, the National Savings Committee, by a steady education in economics—converting financial theories of currency, goods and services into the terms of men and munitions—educated the general public into the social consequences of spending and thrift. The control of national finances so established under the patriotic stimulus and urgency of war is no less necessary in peace.