Similar considerations seem to show the impracticability on any considerable scale of a second possible expedient, namely, borrowing abroad. The amount that could be raised in any foreign market at this moment, in comparison with the sum required, is practically infinitesimal, and, if it were possible on any considerable scale, we should again have to face the prospects of ending the war a debtor country, with a huge annual drain on our goods and our services, which would flow abroad in the payment of interest and the redemption of principal. That again, therefore, for all practical purposes, may be brushed aside. There is a third course--payment out of our gold reserve, but that need only be stated to be discarded. We cannot impair the basis of the great system of credit which has made this City of London the financial centre and capital of the world. There remains only one course, the one we have come here today to advocate, and to press upon our fellow-countrymen--to diminish our expenditure and to increase our savings. If you save more you can lend the State more, and the nation will be proportionately enabled to pay for the war out of its own pocket. A second proposition, equally simple, and equally true, is this. If you spend less, you either reduce the cost and volume of our imports, or you leave a larger volume of commodities available for export. The state of the trade balance between ourselves and other countries at this moment affords grounds--I do not say for anxiety, but for serious thought. If you look at the Board of Trade returns for the first five months--that is, to the end of the month of May--of the present year--you will find, as compared with the corresponding period of last year, that our imports have increased by thirty-five and a half millions; while our exports and re-exports have decreased by seventy-three and three-quarter millions. What does that mean? It means a total addition in five months of our indebtedness to other countries of nearly a hundred and ten millions, and if that rate were to continue till we reached the end of a completed year, the figure of indebtedness would rise to over two hundred and sixty millions. That is a serious prospect, and I want to ask you, and those outside, how can that tendency be counteracted? The answer is a very simple one--by reducing all unnecessary expenditure, first, of imported goods--familiar illustrations are tea, tobacco, wine, sugar, petrol; I could easily add to the list--and that would mean that we should have to buy less from abroad; and next, as regards goods which are made at home--you can take as an illustration beer--setting a larger quantity free for export, which means that we have more to sell abroad, and enable capital and labour here at home to be more usefully and appropriately applied. That may seem a rather dry and technical argument--(laughter)--but it goes to the root of the whole matter.