Conscription A Further Derangement Of Commerce

It may be remarked that where the system of conscription exists, a further serious derangement of commerce (affecting the nation which adopts it, and also its internal trade, and by community of interests all other nations with which it conducts commercial relations) is occasioned by the withdrawal of skilful, vigorous and experienced workers into the ranks of fruitless and degrading war.

Securities of stable nations certain however to recover their normal values.

In these circumstances the holders of British securities generally, and of the securities of stable foreign nations, need not be alarmed at the disturbance of prices, whose former level will again be reached. Memories of disaster will fade and perish with impressive speed, and merge into recovered confidence with its embodiment in values; the restorative powers of material Nature seem to spring from a perennial fount; and the depression of securities, temporarily produced by the urgent issues of fresh supplies which war requires, will, in time, be restored to equilibrium with the public demand, through the agency of accumulated savings. It is one of the surest teachings of experience - when contemplating a fall in stocks and helplessly pondering a sale lest a severer fate should come - that the most direful and dreaded troubles which we apprehend are precisely those that never occur; as a writer once epigrammatically phrased it - his life would have been replete with happiness had it not been for the miseries which never appeared.

The heavy decline of values affords the fitting period for investments in stocks which are intrinsically sound.

A Time Of Declining Values In Sound Stocks The Best Time For Investments

In respect of the shares in industries likely to receive an accession of activity by the demand for the materials and manufactured articles which war involves, the increased values present a favourable chance for sales according as personal circumstances suggest to be necessary or expedient. For the stimulated vigour is of more or less transient duration.

A Clear Course For The Ordinary Investor Holding Securities Of A Belligerent Power

A perplexing difficulty might be experienced sometimes by those who hold the securities of one of the belligerent nations: the only clear and expedient course to the ordinary investor would appear to be that, unless that nation were one of the strong and stable communities of the world, a speedy sale, if practicable, should be effected in apprehension of the subsequent results of additional taxation, declining credit, and the possibility of derangements by social discontent.

Probable Effect Of European War On Colonial And U.S. Securities

It might be added that American and Colonial securities would probably be benefited by a continental war, since the diversion of the customary commercial channels would be likely to create fresh openings for the expansion of trade in those countries.