ABSTRACT
The nations of the world fall fairly readily into two groups, capital-exporting nations and capital-importing nations. Before the War, Great Britain, itself for a prolonged period the most important nation in the former category, possessed in London the great free gold market of the world. Capital is to the saver who accumulates it as the finished product is to the entrepreneur, a source of income to be traded to the highest bidder. Being, moreover, in the form of money, its universal acceptability and easy "transportation" render it extremely fluid very much more so than commodities. From the middle of the nineteenth century till the outbreak of the Great War, conditions were well-nigh ideal for a steady transference of capital from creditor to debtor countries. The political horizon was comparatively clear with no such sore spots as a chaotic China or a recalcitrant Australia obtruding themselves as nightmares into the dreamless sleep of international financiers.
