This is, I think, the third time since the war began that I have had the privilege of addressing you in this hall. On the first occasion, as far back as September last, I came here to appeal to you to supply men to be trained to fight our battles at the front. Today I have come to ask you here in the City of London for what is equally necessary for the success of our cause--for the ways and means which no community in the Empire is better qualified to provide, to organise, and to replenish. This is the costliest war that has ever been waged. A hundred years ago our ancestors spent eight hundred millions to vindicate, as we are vindicating today, the freedom of Europe, in a war which lasted the best part of 20 years, which brings out a rough average of considerably less than a million pounds a week. Our total expenditure today approaches for one year a thousand millions, and we are spending now, and are likely to spend for weeks and months to come, something like three million pounds a day. Our daily revenue from taxation, I suppose, works out less than three-quarters of a million per day. Those are facts which speak for themselves, and they show the urgent necessity, not only for a loan, but for a national loan--a loan far larger in its scale, far broader in its basis, and far more imperious in its demand upon every class and every section of the community than any in our history. For the first time in our financial experience no limit has been placed on the amount to be raised; and that means that every citizen in the country is invited to subscribe as much as he can to help us to a complete and speedy victory. I need not dwell on its attractiveness from the mere investor's point of view. Indeed, the only criticism which I have heard in or outside the House of Commons is that it is perhaps a little too generous in its terms. That is a fault, if it be a fault, upon the right side. For L100 in cash you get L100 in stock, with interest at 4-1/2 per cent. on the credit of the British Exchequer. The loan is redeemable in thirty years, when every subscriber, or those who succeed him, must get his money back in full, and the Government retain an option to repay at the end of ten years. That is the earliest date on which any question of re-investment can arise. Further, the stock or bonds will be accepted at par, with an allowance for accrued interest as the equivalent of cash, for subscription to any loan that the Government may issue in this country throughout the war.