facturers with an article to sell, which is
important to the existence of any nation with a seaboard; and they are
entirely justified in legitimate endeavours to push their wares. The
fact that the armament firms of England, Germany, and France had certain
interests in common, is often used as a text for sermons on the subject
of the unpatriotic cynicism of international finance. It is easy to
paint them as a ring of cold-blooded devils trying to stimulate
bloodthirsty feeling between the nations so that there may be a good
market for weapons of destruction. From their point of view, they are
providers of engines of defence which they make, in the first place, for
the use of their own country, and are ready to supply also, in time of
peace, to other nations in order that their plant may be kept running,
and the cost of production may be kept low. This is one of the matters
on which public opinion may have something to say when the war is over.
In the meantime it may be noted that unsavoury scandals have
occasionally arisen in connection with the placing of battleship orders,
and that this is another reason why a loan to finance them is likely to
have an unpleasant flavour in the nostrils of the fastidious.

But if we admit the very worst that the most searching critic of
international finance can allege against the proposal that we imagine to
be put forward by the Republic of Barataria--if we admit that a loan to
balance a deficit and pay for ships probably implies wastefulness,
corruption, political rottenness, impecunious Chauvinism and all the
rest of it, the question still arises whether it is the business of an
issuing house to refuse the chance of doing good business for itself and
for the London money-market, because it has reason to believe that the
money lent will not be well spent. In the case supposed, we have seen
that the terms offered and the commission to be made by the intermediary
were such that the latter would have been shown the door. But if these
matters had been satisfactory, ought the proposal to have been rejected
because the loan was to be raised for unproductive purposes?

In other words, is it the business of an issuing house to take care of
the economic morals of its clients, or is it merely concerned to see
that the securities which it offers to the public are well secured? In
ordinary life, and in the relations between moneylender and borrower at
home, no such question could be asked. If I