Weights and measures after the war

Abstract

In my judgment the United Kingdom will be successful in the present awful struggle, but the country will suffer great injury to many trades and manufactures. We shall also be liable for enormous debts contracted in carrying out the greatest and most expensive war which has ever yet desolated the world. In fact our resources as regards population, producing power, and wealth will have been diminished, while at the same time we shall have incurred fresh and enormous liabilities. The National Debt will be at least ten times as great as it was before the war, perhaps twenty times as much, and the nation will have to bear the strain of raising the interest upon this enormous debt while our trade and commerce will have been seriously damaged or impaired by the general disturbance caused by the war in all commercial matters. We must contemplate the rebuilding of a half ruined Empire, and to do this we have not only to restore our former business, but to develop it still further. This, in my judgment, can only be done by increasing our trade, our commerce, our general sources of income as derived from our own and other countries, and at the same time removing, so far as we can do so, all possible hindrances to the spread of our trade with other nations.