Abstract

Editorials

A large part of the foreign products which the Great Britain needs to support her population has been obtained in lieu of interest on her investments abroad. She could not, of course, continue long to receive many more goods in imports than she sent out in exports without paying for them. This payment has been partly made in the service extended by her loans of capital. In 1914 British foreign investments amounted to about twenty billion dollars. It is estimated that before the war the income on these investments was about one billion a year. Probably four-fifths of this income was reinvested abroad, and the remaining two hundred million were received and consumed at home. Foreign investment not only made a higher standard of living possible for many inhabitants of the British Isles than if they had had to live on what they themselves produced, but it added to the economic and political power of the Empire.