FRENZIED SOCIALIST FINANCE .sx Sacrificing Foreign Investments and Making Disaster Worse .sx By J. B. FIRTH .sx THE first act of a Socialist Government , Mr. Henderson has declared , would be to nationalise all the banks and assume control of the financial machinery of the country .sx Simultaneously they would " mobilise " the nation's foreign investments .sx " Mobilise " is the Socialist dialect for " commandeer .sx " Sir Stafford Cripps has said it .sx " We should require to have at our disposal the foreign investments of everybody in the country .sx " And he gave the reason .sx " To keep the pound from going too low .sx " Now why should the ex-Solicitor-General expect the pound to droop and dip ?sx Because he knows that it must fall like a stone if he and his friends win this election .sx Like a stone in a pond , because they have proclaimed a policy of Free and Care-free Spending .sx So Sir Stafford Cripps , rightly foreseeing that the pound must fall , says that to prevent it from falling " too low " the Socialists will impound everybody's foreign investments .sx That it was done in the war is held to be sufficient answer to all objectors .sx BURKING A PLAIN DUTY .sx So it was , but only as a last resort to finance purchases of food and munitions from the United States without a breakdown in the exchanges .sx And even then not till after the Great War had been raging for fifteen months .sx But our Socialists will make it their first aid to stay the furious bleeding caused by the bare announcement of their triumph at the polls .sx What they say in effect is this :sx " We will deliberately burke our duty to defend the pound by national economy , vigorous retrenchment , the avoidance of all new expenditure , and the restriction of imports , and we will throw into the breach all the nation's foreign investments , lock , stock , and barrel .sx " The war analogy is wholly grotesque .sx Then there was no choice , for all other means had been exhausted , when Mr. McKenna devised his Dollar Securities scheme under which the Treasury bought American and Canadian railway bonds and shares and sent them across the Atlantic to pay for the huge British purchases of munitions and foodstuffs .sx The adverse balance had already grown to enormous proportions by the end of 1915 .sx In January , 1916 , the British Government published a first list of 54 dollar securities that the Treasury was prepared either to borrow or to buy , and it set forth the prices it would pay .sx That list , by May , 1917 , was extended to as many as 900 securities , and Great Britain was absolutely at the end of its financial tether .sx WAR LOANS FROM AMERICA .sx It had lived , so far as purchases from the United States were concerned , on its American investments to the amount of 600,000,000 .sx What would have happened financially if America had not come into the war when she did no one has ever explained .sx Her entry came at the very nick of time .sx As a belligerent she lent freely , and allowed Great Britain to pile up a colossal debt of 1,000,000,000 for self and partners .sx Our British Socialists assume by implication that the moment they come into power this country will be at the end of its financial credit , and there for once their instinct is sound .sx It will .sx So they prescribe in advance oxygen for the people who are lunatic enough to return them to power .sx At least they understand the devastating effect of a victory won on a programme such as theirs .sx Let it be remembered that in 1916 a penal tax of 10 per cent .sx was placed on the income from listed securities not handed over .sx But the British investor made such patriotic response that the Government was able to float two large loans in the United States .sx But what is the position to-day with respect to Great Britain's foreign investment ?sx It is difficult to find accurate and trustworthy figures .sx In the House of Commons lately a figure of 4,000,000,000 was mentioned as representing the total overseas investments of the country , and I have seen it further stated that the market value of these securities at the end of July was no more than 3,140,000,000 .sx OUR OVERSEAS INVESTMENTS .sx What is it now ?sx Since July there has been one long decline in values of all United States and South American securities , of all international securities , and of almost all industrial undertakings everywhere .sx Is to-day's figure , therefore , likely to be more than 2,250,000,000 ?sx But I confess that my confidence in the above-mentioned figure of 4,000,000,000 is rather shaken by the fact that I find it in the writings of economists ten years ago and even in pre-war dissertations .sx A figure more pertinent - again , if correct - to the argument was that given by Mr. Pethick Lawrence recently in the House :sx " If you exclude , " he said , " the property of Britons held in the Dominions , India , and the Colonies ; if you take the market value and not the face value alone , you will still find that the total wealth held abroad is over 1,000,000,000 sterling .sx It is true , as Mr. Runciman said , that not the whole of that is negotiable in the form of currencies which would be valuable for the purpose of meeting this emergency , but I am sure that he does not pretend to suggest that there is not in foreign countries enough to meet the situation .sx " And yet this was very definitely suggested by Mr. A. M. Samuel , whose view is that though we have reinstated the 1,000,000,000 of foreign investments with which we parted during the war , it has been for the most part reinstated in securities expressed in terms of sterling .sx SOCIALISTS' AIRY NONSENSE .sx Clearly there is no sort of agreement as to the figure of good dollar securities held in this country , and - a most essential point - marketable in the United States at the present time .sx If they are not marketable , they are no good for the purpose , and it does not require any prophetic insight to know that the United States authorities would fight very shy of any proposal at a time like this that they should absorb even 100,000,000 worth of none but the best American securities - if there is that amount at present in this country .sx If the quantity available is twice or thrice that figure the suggestion will be twice or thrice as unwelcome .sx The more one looks at the scheme the more hare-brained it seems , when practically the only potential market on the grand scale for these securities is itself in the depths of depressions and desperately anxious - despite all its bullion - as to its own immediate future .sx The United States , moreover , have just been driven to the device of establishing a vast new Corporation whose function it will be to take over - as a matter of most unwelcome duty - great blocks of their own securities which are frozen as hard and stiff as if they had been immersed in the icy waters of Lake Superior .sx What airy nonsense , then , it is to talk of America stretching out a willing hand to accept these " mobilised " British securities and give a Socialist Government , whose aims it would suspect and whose intelligence it would despise , abundant credits so that they may play ducks and drakes with the financial system and the wealth and the solvency of Great Britain !sx With what patience would they receive the wretched excuse that whatever catastrophe may happen to other peoples under the wide sky , the British trade unionist standard of living shall not be touched or the edges of the dole be pared ?sx If the whole world is sick , and universal world sickness is put forward by the Socialists as the first cause and the last - under Capitalism - of all our troubles , where is a large market to be found for Government stocks of the leading South American Republics - now in actual default , or in a position so doubtful that their securities are quoted as wide as 30-50 or 40-60 ?sx What in ordinary times might easily have been disposed of is to-day unsaleable in bulk , and bulk is of the essence of the scheme .sx The Socialists have been very wary of explanation and chary of detail .sx There has been no hint as to the terms on which they will " mobilise .sx " Is it to be " for the " ?sx If so , the duration of what ?sx Of their stay in Downing-street ?sx Of the crisis in the fate of the pound ?sx Till stabilisation , perhaps .sx But who can conceive stabilisation at all while they continue in power and the roaring programme of Socialisation is in full blast ?sx MONEY TO MELT AWAY .sx Moreover , just in so far as these commandeered securities are sold or pledged for the purpose of maintaining the exchanges , to that same extent will the nation be deprived of the revenue from these investments , which is itself a vital factor in redressing the excess of imports over exports .sx Even Socialists cannot recreate a spent investment or let off a sky-rocket twice .sx It is only in the moral , not in the financial , sphere that " What I spent I saved " is true .sx This is the one argument to which Socialists are likely to listen , for the woes of a British investor stripped of his foreign securities leave them quite cold .sx He is a capitalist and , therefore , stands to be robbed at pleasure or convenience .sx But the loss of interest on these foreign investments would be directly manifested in the cost of our imports , not excluding wheat and meat , and in fact affecting them most of all .sx The unemployed - on whose sole behalf , according to their story , Socialist ex-Ministers quitted the path of national duty - would after a while find everything they bought rising fast in price against them .sx And that because their sentimental " champions " had mobilised the country's foreign investments and the money had just melted away .sx How long the interval would be no one can say .sx The more thoroughly Socialistic and merry the curtain-raiser , the shorter it would last and the gloomier the tragedy to follow .sx It is all demonstrable step by step .sx Those who eat their seed corn die of hunger and want .sx BRITAIN'S FOREIGN RECEIPTS .sx According to a memorandum published by the League of Nations last year , the net receipts of Great Britain on account of interest and dividends from foreign investments amounted to 425,000,000 .sx This year the sum is probably not much more than half .sx But fancy imperilling 200,000,000 a year in order to save a 10 per cent .sx cut in unemployment benefit !sx Young Moses Primrose in the story did at least bring back a pair of green spectacles from the fair when he went to raise money by the sale of the family horse , and through those dearly bought glasses he may have seen his folly in a truer light .sx What the financial geniuses of the Socialist party would bring back from the World's Fair in return for the lost foreign investments of the British nation I cannot conceive , but I hope there would be a sufficient consignment of hemp in the cargo .sx Changes in 'Varsity Life .sx PASSING OF THE SYBARITE .sx By W. A. DARLINGTON .sx THOSE mysterious anonymous wise acres known as " they " have been at it again .sx " They " say - or so I am credibly informed - that in the poorest classes of the community there is a marked lack of initiative and energy among the adolescent males , and an equally marked efflorescence of those qualities among the adolescent females .sx In plainer English , the boys won't work and the girls will .sx And that means , of course , that if ever we get a dictatorship of the proletariat in this country , it will be made one degree more horrible by being a matriarchy .sx The mind quails before so fearful a prospect .sx Against this , it is heartening to set the comfortable words spoken by Dr. F. H. Dudden , Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University , in his address to Convocation .sx So far as he knows it , the rising male generation seems to Dr. Dudden to be wholly admirable .sx And he claims to know it pretty comprehensively .sx For present-day Oxford is no more the haunt of a privileged class , but draws its numbers from every level of society .sx Forty-five per cent .sx of the undergraduates now in residence are able to be there only because they are getting financial assistance .sx