trade, and German finance would only be saved from utter collapse by an undertaking on the part of the German Government scrupulously to respect private property, and especially bank reserves. It is true the German Jingoes might wonder what they had made war for, and this elementary lesson in international finance would do more than the greatness of the British navy to cool their blood. For it is a fact in human nature that men will fight more readily than they will pay, and that they will take personal risks much more readily than they will disgorge money, or, for that matter, earn it. "Man," in the language of Bacon, "loves danger better than travail." Events which are still fresh in the memory of business men show the extraordinary interdependence of the modern financial world. A financial crisis in New York sends up the English bank rate to 7 per cent., thus involving the ruin of many English businesses which might otherwise have weathered a difficult period. It thus happens that one section of the financial world is, against its will, compelled to come to the rescue of any other considerable section which may be in distress. From a modern and delightfully lucid treatise on international finance,[13] I take the following very suggestive passages: Banking in all countries hangs together so closely that the strength of the best may easily be that of the weakest if scandal arises owing to the mistakes of the worst.... Just as a man cycling down a crowded street depends for his life not only on his skill, but more on the course of the traffic there.... Banks in Berlin were obliged, from motives of self-protection (on the occasion of the Wall Street crisis), to let some of their gold go to assuage the American craving for it.... If the crisis became so severe that London had to restrict its facilities in this respect, other centres, which habitually keep balances in London which they regard as so much gold, because a draft on London is as good as gold, would find themselves very seriously inconvenienced; and it thus follows that it is to the interest of all other centres which trade on those facilities which London alone gives to take care that London's task is not made too difficult. This is especially so in the case of foreigners, who keep a balance in London which is borrowed. In fact, London drew in the gold required for New York from seventeen other countries.... Incidentally it may be mentioned in this connection that German commerce is in a special sense interested in the maintenance of English credit. The authority just quoted says: