These, then, are some of the questions I discuss in the following pages. I do not expect, of course, to find common agreement. This would be presumption. Nothing is more difficult than to destroy theories. Experience is often impotent. Prophets are not always silenced when their predictions are unrealized. They continue to prophecy. They predicted confidently that when the world-war came the financial crisis would be far worse than the military crisis, and that this country would be in the throes of a panic the dimensions of which no human imagination could conceive. Foreign countries with vast credits here would take away every sovereign and every bar of gold they could lay their hands on. Only those sovereigns would remain that we had been far-sighted enough to store in our back gardens, or, if we had no back gardens, in our discarded stockings. Nothing of this happened. There was no financial panic, no raid upon our gold reserves. If there was any apprehension it was mild and momentary, thanks to the soundness of our banking system, the strength of our financial structure, and the wisdom of our Government, to say nothing of the soul of the nation. It was discovered that, instead of other countries having it in their power to take gold from us, they were so greatly in our debt that they could not liquidate those debts, and the exchanges went violently against them. Since then gold has flowed into the country in unprecedented amount, and there is still no sign of interruption to the flow. This country is now overwhelmed with gold. The reserves of the Bank of England and of the joint stock banks continued to grow so rapidly that loans, or “credits” as they are called, glutted the market. Banks lent with difficulty even on nominal terms. So far from predictions being fulfilled, that has come to pass never dreamt of in the wildest of dreams--a land towards which, in the midst of war, the golden river was flowing, fed by tributary streams, and undiminished in volume by huge purchases of warlike stores and material from neutral countries. The country was saved by wisdom--by the wisdom of the people and by the wisdom of the Government which promptly acted on the wisest advice. This begot confidence and strengthened faith. It was calm confidence and serene faith in intellectual ability that enabled the country to go through the crisis with success and that evoked the profound gratitude of all. Confidence, the energizing, vitalizing spirit of economic progress is distinct from what is called Lombard Street credit. Yet both connote a confiding in or a believing in something. In what? Confidence is fundamentally a confiding in the greatness of the nation. There can be no confidence in the littleness of a nation.