Then there was that other mass of wealth held as security against advances to customers, which in such times was also unrealizable. The market for this class of wealth was practically destroyed. The exchange machinery came to a stop. It was inevitable, too, that on the outbreak of so colossal a war, the foreign exchanges would break down. International trading was thrown immediately into a state of confusion. It was faced with all the complicated risks of sea-warfare, contraband declarations, neutral nation rights, insurance, freights, and the thousand and one unforeseen difficulties arising from warfare between great maritime nations. Debtors to this country could not remit money or goods to liquidate their debts, and debtors here could not redeem their debts abroad. As pointed out in former chapters, prophets always confidently foretold that one immediate result of such a war would be a raid on our gold stores by foreign countries. Our actual experiences showed how feeble were these imaginings. They were too feeble to foresee the impossibility of exporting great masses of gold abroad. Our navy would stop their exportation to enemy countries, whilst risks of capture, freights and insurance would stop their export to neutral countries. It was rumoured that the British Government placed an embargo on exports of gold. This is highly improbable, for the embargoes imposed by the war were sufficiently preventative; certainly so in the early months of the war. But apart from these tremendous difficulties and obstacles, it was vastly more important to discover that we had greater power to take gold from foreign countries than foreigners had to take it from us, thereby again destroying theories. It was revealed that this country was, indeed, the world’s creditor; that nations were indebted to us, not we to them. This was why, with few exceptions, notably the French Exchange, the exchanges went in our favour. This was violently so with the New York Exchange, which consequently broke down completely. America was greatly in this country’s debt, and as it could not liquidate in the ordinary way by buying exchange on London, New York had eventually to send gold to Ottawa. This, together with our subsequent huge military purchases in the States, gradually improved the position, and in a few months the exchange was working normally.