But such a charge is absolutely inexplicable when one accuses France, England and Belgium to be, in their admirable and heroic campaign for the world's deliverance and freedom, the pliant tools of contemptible speculators in the production of war materials.
Governments and nations are, as a rule, far from having dropped to such a low state of incurable corruption. For many of them, there yet exists bright summits, shining with the clear light of Justice, Right and Honour, which in those times of sufferings and burning tears, are the pledge of better days and the promise of the world's resurrection.
Incredible "Nationalist" Notions.
Can it be possibly believed that the "Nationalist" leader has asserted that when the British capitalists and bankers invested the savings entrusted to their safe keeping, they were principally actuated by the desire to create in Canada a financial influence which would, in due course, assist with force in dragging the Dominion to participate in the Imperial wars against her better judgment? Yet, so he has positively written and developed the wild argument.
Any man, with the slightest business experience, knows that, in all cases, would-be borrowers go where money is to be lent. I have not yet learned that one of them ever went to the North Pole in search of millions for railway building and all kinds of industrial and commercial enterprises. Daring explorers who ventured thither, facing so many risks, were stimulated by a laudable thirst of fame and the desire of scientific progress. They did not imagine, for a moment, that they were likely to discover, in these far away regions, great financial markets amply provided with millions of accumulated capital waiting for safe and profitable investments.
Canada, a young country, as large as all Europe in territorial extent, with wonderful undeveloped resources of the agricultural soil, of the mines, of immense forests, of mighty rivers, of large and breezy lakes, could not progress without labour and capital. The large natural increase of the population, supplemented by immigration, was sure to supply the labour. Capital, to the amount of hundreds of millions, could not be provided by the only savings of our people. Immigration of capital was even more pressingly required than that of men. The Governments of Canada, federal and provincial, city corporations, railway companies, industrial concerns, wanting money, all went where it could be found. It happened that London, the capital of the British Empire, was by far the largest financial market of the world. No wonder then that instead of going to Lapland, Canadian borrowers crowded in London, where they met with those of nearly all the nations of the world, gathering in the same city for the same purpose.
Two incontrovertible economical truisms are, without the shadow of a doubt, the following:—
1. That a would-be borrower wishes to get the money he wants in the easiest way at the lowest interest charge;
2. That a wise lender wishes to secure for his money the safest investment carrying the highest possible rate of interest; the rate of interest being however subordinated, in his mind, to the safety of the investment.
Such were the sound economical considerations which settled for the Canadian borrowers of all sorts, and the British investors, the conditions of all the loans made on Canadian account.