These constantly occurring troubles could not but gradually weaken confidence in the future. When a man gropes his way in an impenetrable fog, in a place strewn with snares and pitfalls, ignorant of his whereabouts, knowing not whether he is progressing or going round in a dangerous circle, he cannot feel confident of avoiding a fatal end. He can trust only in hope and in his destiny. This nation trusted in its destiny. Amidst these multiplying trials and difficulties it trusted in the strength of its own soul. Therefore, while prices were falling on the Stock Exchange, trade was growing and booming. More capital for trade was needed. So wealth in the shape of securities was turned into cash capital, which helped the downfall in stocks and shares. There was no lack of confidence evidently in our economic position and future. Our economic prosperity is not dependent upon Stock Exchange speculation. The Stock Exchange has often boomed and flourished during economic depression. This is because, when we have idle capital or surplus, we gamble with it, or invest it, if we cannot employ it profitably in business and commerce. We must never, therefore, assume that when inactivity reigns on the Stock Exchange and prices fall there, and stocks and shares become depreciated, that the nation is losing confidence, and that economic stagnation has come. If prices fall on the Stock Exchange through political and other causes, and because merchants and others are turning securities into cash, the aggregate value of the nation’s wealth may be rising and accumulating far in excess of the depreciation on the Stock Exchange. It is probable that this has been so in recent years. Banks, for instance, have had to write down their investments year after year, yet they have earned large profits and have easily maintained their dividends. They could not have done this unless their losses in one direction had been counterbalanced by their gains in another. So it has been with other great financial institutions. They have easily kept out of the bankruptcy court. We have had a remarkable demonstration, then, of the power of confidence even in recent years and in last year’s crisis. The measures taken by the Government did not weaken that confidence, but strengthened it. Take the moratorium, the first real moratorium this country has experienced. Had academic critics been told in the beginning of July that war would break out in the beginning of August, and that the Government would declare a moratorium, I believe they would unanimously have predicted disaster, complete and irretrievable. If they foresaw disaster as the certain end of a steady increase in armaments, nothing short of the fall of the skies would follow a moratorium. Nothing would more surely precipitate a panic, for if anything would bring about a state of bewildering confusion it would be a moratorium.