kruptcy:
as a catastrophic jolt. It is a quite impossible nightmare of cessation.
The reality is the completest contrast. All the belligerent countries of
the world are at the present moment quietly, steadily and progressively
going bankrupt, and the mass of people are not even aware of this
process of insolvency.

An individual when he goes bankrupt is measured by the monetary standard
of the country he is in; he pays five or ten or fifteen or so many
shillings in the pound. A community in debt does something which is in
effect the same, but in appearance rather different. It still pays a
pound, but the purchasing power of the pound has diminished. This is
what is happening all over the world to-day; there is a rise in prices.
This is automatic national bankruptcy; unplanned, though perhaps not
unforeseen. It is not a deliberate State act, but a consequence of the
interruption of communications, the diversion of productive energy, the
increased demand for many necessities by the Government and the general
waste under war conditions.

At the beginning of this war England had a certain national debt; it has
paid off none of that original debt; it has added to it tremendously; so
far as money and bankers' records go it still owes and intends to pay
that original debt; but if you translate the language of L.s.d. into
realities, you will find that in loaves or iron or copper or hours of
toil, or indeed in any reality except gold, it owes now, so far as that
original debt goes, far less than it did at the outset. As the war goes
on and the rise in prices continues, the subsequent borrowings and
contracts are undergoing a similar bankrupt reduction. The attempt of
the landlord of small weekly and annual properties to adjust himself to
the new conditions by raising rents is being checked by legislation in
Great Britain, and has been completely checked in France. The attempts
of labour to readjust wages have been partially successful in spite of
the eloquent protests of those great exponents of plain living, economy,
abstinence, and honest, modest, underpaid toil, Messrs. Asquith,
McKenna, and Runciman. It is doubtful if the rise in wages is keeping
pace with the rise in prices. So far as it fails to do so the load is on
the usual pack animal, the poor man.

The rest of the loss falls chiefly upon the creditor class, the people
with fixed incomes and fixed salaries, the landlords, who have let at
long leases, the people with