Excerpt from Unseen Empire: A Study of the Plight of Nations That Do Not Pay Their Debts In this book I have tried to tell in part the story of the bondage Of the nations due to the cost of war and Of war preparation. I have tried to Show that civilized nations are one and all in their degree under the dominion of a power stronger than K'ings or Parliaments, more last ing than Armies or Navies, that is, the Unseen Empire of Finance. I have tried to Show that this mastery is not now in the hands of individual men, however powerful, but that it has passed over into an impersonal Empire of Debt. I have tried further to illustrate Johnson's law of waste, 1 to the effect that military expenditures among competitive nations expand in peace or in war as wealth expands, by the law that war shall consume the fruits of progress, and, finally, to show a way in which our nation, at least, may possibly escape the operation of this law. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.