3 FEBRUARY 1990, Page 21

Cash is victorious

CASH is now king, and the increasingly numerous companies which cannot pay their bills are dead — so I was saying last week. I now find that Clausewitz and Engels said it better. This unlikely com- bination of strategic and economic thinkers came up with a military and monetary analogy — Clausewitz as paraphrased by Engels and quoted by John Keegan in The Face Of Battle: 'Fighting is to war what cash payment is to trade, for however rarely it may be necessary for it actually to occur, everything is directed towards it, and eventually it must take place all the same, and must be decisive.'