The police feel that the time has come for them to defend themselves, and that is what is called reprisals in Ireland. - David Lloyd George

There was something fundamentally wrong with our economic system. It was based upon injustice and could not last.

The action of the Government which had had the most disastrous effect on British trade was their premature and precipitate restoration of the gold standard before our credit was ripe for that departure. It had made sterling dearer and thus artificially put up the price of British goods in the neutral markets, where we were already competing on very narrow margins with our trade rivals. At this very hour coalowners and miners had been driven to the brink of a yawning chasm of strife, largely through this deed of egregious recklessness by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The Western skies are already black with the flight of capital seeking safety beyond the Atlantic. The fright is real. There has been nothing like it since horror filled the streets of Rome at the approach of Attila.