"No expenditure without security," runs the formula in which this policy clothes itself.

It is justified only when the security is fixed by the expenditure.

In a great civilized State it is the duties which must be fulfilled--as Treitschke, our great historian and national politician, tells us--that determine the expenditure, and the great Finance Minister is not the man who balances the national accounts by sparing the national forces, while renouncing the politically indispensable outlay, but he who stimulates all the live forces of the nation to cheerful activity, and so employs them for national ends that the State revenue suffices to meet the admitted political demands.

He can only attain this purpose if he works in harmony with the Ministers for Commerce, Agriculture, Industries, and Colonies, in order to break down the restrictions which cramp the enterprise and energy of the individual, to make all dead values remunerative, and to create favourable conditions for profitable business.

A great impulse must thrill the whole productive and financial circles of the State, if the duties of the present and the future are to be fulfilled.
Thus the preparation for war, which, under modern conditions, calls for very considerable expenditure, exercises a marked influence on the entire social and political life of the people and on the financial policy of the State..