income against future contingencies which may never arise, if he is fool enough to do so. Nay, a whole group, even a nation, may commit this folly if they choose. Soviet Russia went a considerable way along this foolish path when they strove to put their country-workers on or below starvation rations in order to expedite the creation of industrial capital, an impolicy which they have now had sense enough to correct. But the fallacy of unlimited saving in this country was left undetected for the greater part of a century, for this reason. If Britain had been an isolated economic community (as now too late we are seeking to become) we should have been brought up against the limit of effective saving long ago. But so long as we were the only advanced industrial country with a large exportable surplus, there was no limit to our profitable saving. Any nation, like any individual, may save all it chooses, provided other nations are not able or willing to follow the same policy. It was only when Germany, America, France, and Japan began to encroach upon our practical monopoly of the world market for the export of staple manufactures and for the capital development of backward countries, that the fallacy of unlimited saving became apparent. It is at root a very simple fallacy, viz. the contention that what anyone can do, all can do. The doctrine of human equality used to be driven home in American schools by reminding a class that any boy might become President of the United States. But no
