Security, of course, may be an expensive thing. Whatever it
may cost, however, we must have it. On the other hand, we are inclined to believe that even under what will be in the abstract a more expensive system of conducting our commerce there will be compensations. The national effort will be more united in a conscious direction, and industrial output will probably continue to be accelerated, as it has already been notoriously accelerated during the war. The higher cost of living, and the necessary counterpart and corollary of higher wages, will probably be a great incentive to invention in labour- saving appliances, and in a purposed effort towards standardization of manufactured articles which hitherto have been produced in a wasteful and fanciful fashion. A new world lies before us, and influences and motives will have a force that did not belong to them under the old conditions.
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