CHAPTER XII.
ENGLISH WAR FINANCE Protecting Trade and the Trader--How German Banks Paid--The English Loan--England's Wealth--The Income Tax--More Taxes.
A giant Atlas bearing the civilized world on its financial shoulders has arisen between the North and the Irish seas.

That is the picture that stands at the opening of 1915, where before Germany had endeavored to stamp the label "Perfidious and degraded nation of shopkeepers." Only the pencil of a Dore could sketch this giant and put him in figures of proper relief as, aroused from his pastime of trade and the acquisition of shillings, he summons with one hand the resources of the empire and with the other passes them out to needy warring nations, taking care all the while that the necessary dealing of exchange and commerce have the least possible disturbance.
Kitchener says the war may last for two years, but he is making preparations for three years, and must do this job so thoroughly that no repetition will be required.
If it is war for three years, then this mighty financial Atlas of England is preparing to write its name on promises to pay more gold than all the money-gold on the surface of the earth today.

And England won't hesitate to do it if necessary--not for one moment.
How can she advance money to Russia, Belgium, France, and other countries at war or just going into the war, and ask no foreign assistance, no overseas help,--except to be let alone,--expand her home trade and wages, pay with a lavish hand, and still pile up real gold both at home and over the ocean?
The first answer is because she does expand trade; because she does pay and pay promptly; and because she does protect her own trade.
The United States does not protect its trade or its citizens anywhere in the world to-day.

It shivers in war-time, and borrows of everybody else when it has a panic of its own.
There is only one way to make trade, and that is to pay and protect.
England, through centuries of fighting to protect both trade and the trader, has learned the way to the highest freedom in both trade and finance.
Therefore, before this most Audacious War was set afoot England had a very small stock of coin gold but a very large stock of gold credit-bills.
For years England has held in her cash box from $1,800,000,000 to $2,500,000,000 of the commercial credits of the world.

With goods and trade-honor behind these promises to pay gold, she had no need of the metal but only of command of the seas, that her gold might come in when needed.