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 it tried to take up its usual work when the war was over. Its basis and character had been radically altered. The politicians and officials who had charge of their country's fortunes during the contest found ready to their hand an almost too perfect financial weapon. This weapon they took and worked and overworked and twisted all out of shape. They did so chiefly because they found, in the Money Market's almost unlimited power to create credit, the easiest and most popular way of getting money that was wanted for the war. Money that they took by taxation meant a wrench. Money that they wheedled out of our pockets in subscriptions to loans meant much drum beating and effort. Money that they manufactured with the help of banks, thanks to the ever expanding elasticity of the Money Market, was much more easily come by and seemed at first to touch nobody's pocket.

Small wonder that politicians gleefully seized a weapon which solved for them one of the worst of the war's problems, and used it with a freedom that was only checked by the need for preserving the financial decencies before the critical eyes of neutrals, from whom it might be necessary to borrow. With such effect did they use it that the Money Market,