In this virtual trade of this year's crops for titles to future years' crops we shall get a high price for the former and pay a low price (in present valuation) for the latter. Investment securities are, and will be, a drug on the market. In other words, the rate of return to the investor will be high; the rate of interest on long-time loans will be high and stay high, that on short-time loans may fluctuate greatly. The rise in the rate of interest on long-time investments is one of the most vital and far-reaching effects of the war. At bottom, interest always arises from the exchange of present and future goods. The rate of interest, as I have tried to show in my book of that title, is simply the crystallization, in a market rate, of the impatience of the human race for its bread and butter. War has now produced such impatience in populations of hundreds of millions. It is this impatience which dumps the securities upon us, sends down their price, and sends up the rate of interest. As Byron W. Holt has said, there is no moratorium for hunger. The fall of securities in Europe produces the like fall in this and other countries. One of the consequences to America of being forced to play the role of money lender and one of the consequences of the rise in the rate of interest here, or what amounts to the same thing, the fall in the prices of bonds, will be an increased difficulty of financing our own enterprises. Only the most promising enterprises will be able to sell their securities. This means that we shall be neglecting, to some extent, our own enterprises, to finance the European war instead. This general depreciation of investment securities will doubtless lead to many bankruptcies, if not to a genuine crisis. It will also give tempting opportunities to investors. The likelihood of a genuine panic is lessened by the fact that every one recognizes the real cause of the disturbance and that insolvency is not suspected. According to the best commercial observers, the previous liquidation had been fairly well completed. Unless they are mistaken, disaster will not be likely to follow.