INVESTMENT
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I have read with great. interest the recent articles of your city editor on investment, and should much like to know what you, and he, have to say on a phase of the problem which, I think, he has not yet touched on.
I assume that the people of this country are still saving, year by year, large sums of money, and the question is' how these savings are to be invested. It is new money, and must find its way into new things.
Hitherto a large, probably a very large, part of what is annually saved has gone abroad, but this process is, I think, coming to an end. The foreigner is getting tired of paying the interest, or remitting the profits, if there are any, on the capital already advanced, and we, in our turn, arc getting tired of throwing good money after bad, and shall tend, in future, to keep our money at home, and this, no less on social than on economic grounds, will, I think, be sound policy. Nostram exornemu.s Spartam. If the investor has to put up with less interest, his capital will be safer, and, whether 'it is or not, he, and we, shall have a better country to live in. We have talked a good deal of building " Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land." Is it not time to begin ?
Meanwhile new money, finding its customary outlets restricted, will slowly accumulate, and the value of gilt-edged securities, which is still far below the level reached before the. Boer War, will slowly rise. To what ? Has not a 24 per cent. basis been foretold by Mr. Keynes ?—Yours faithfully,
57 Campden Hill Court, W. 8. JAMES M. RENDEL.
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