Confidence, therefore, is based ultimately upon _greatness_, and our greatness as a nation and an empire was never more strikingly demonstrated and vindicated than during the war crisis. Greatness can exist, therefore, apart from gold reserves. Let us look back upon the years preceding the crisis. Let us go back to the American crisis in 1907. This crisis was the result of a lack of confidence in America’s economic and moral greatness. It was the result of scandalous dishonesty, the kind of dishonesty that we know to be impossible in this country. Yet London could not but be shaken by the panic there. London was, indeed, shaken by it more than by the crisis last August. The United States took gold from London in huge quantities at a loss, and the Bank of England rate, in order to try to stop these exports, had to be raised to a high figure for an indefinite time. Some of our banks were even accused of assisting the United States to the hurt of our own banking position. But the storm was faced and weathered. Years before then it had faced and weathered another great storm in the Baring crisis. These historical happenings show how mightily strong is that superstructure we have raised in our midst, whether it be a structure of paper or of iron. Then came the Morocco crisis, which was the beginning of the Stock Exchange depression, and which has culminated in the European war. When I speak of Stock Exchange depression I distinguish it from trade depression, for depression on the Stock Exchange often coincides with trade activity. The Morocco crisis brought the fear of war upon the world. If Germany was prepared one day to fight she began to make financial preparations for it. There can be little doubt that she prepared insidiously for this by depressing in recent years values on the Stock Exchange, selling securities to weaken us and strengthen herself. This culminated in the colossal selling weeks before the war, and in the heavy purchases of gold in the London bullion market. There were, however, other unhappy events. There were the revolution in Mexico, the financial crises in Argentina and Brazil, the political and financial crises in France, the Balkan wars, the labour upheavals in South Africa, the epidemic of strikes in this country, the failure of the Birkbeck Bank, the Home Rule crisis, and the financial troubles of our colonies and heavy borrowings on their part. One trouble quickly followed another, peril succeeded peril, and never, perhaps, has the world struggled amidst such political and financial trials. They were years of darkness, and the dawn of a new and a brighter day seemed remote. The nations were groping, knowing not what new peril would confront them. Then the greatest peril of all came in the world-wide catastrophe.