Ebook Reflections of a Financier

The war was responsible for many strange and remarkable happenings; for the throwing together of all manner of people whose paths in the ordinary course of human affairs would be widely divergent. One of these meetings, for which, probably, there would never have been likely occasion under the old order of things, was between one of the worlds greatest financiers and an English labour leader; and although on many questions Otto Kahn and myself differ, the number of things on which we are in agreement is indeed remarkable.

In England financiers are scarcely known outside their own circle and beyond the scope of their profession; some there are who play an important part in the nation's affairs, but their work is unrealised by the great mass of the people, for whom the word financier is merely an unmeaning synonym for the Stock Exchange. I myself certainly have no knowledge of any British financier whose interests are so wide and well-informed and whose sympathies so broad as are those of Mr. Kahn.

If any evidence is needed to show the remarkable mind, the varied tastes, the wide knowledge, and the democratic tendencies of the author of this book, it will be found in the following chapters.