PREFACE 
IN writing the following pages I have tried chiefly to 
address those who, while interested in financial and economic 
questions generally, are not acquainted with the technical 
details of Life assurance as those professionally connected with 
it must be. The latter will therefore probably find in this essay 
some space devoted to explanatory matter which for them is 
familiar and unnecessary. This I must ask them to excuse. 
No one who has undertaken a work of this kind can help 
feeling at the end of it how approximate much of the informa- 
tion, how tentative all of the conclusions, must be. The 
effects of the war on every one of our national industries are 
still working themselves out. It will not be possible to judge 
them completely for many years. What has been done must 
therefore be appraised accordingly. 
The chief source of information in making this study has 
been the series of the annual returns by the Life Assurance 
Companies to the Board of Trade. It deals only with the 
Companies making such returns, established within the United 
Kingdom, and transacting Ordinary Life assurance business, 
Industrial Life assurance business, or both. 
I have pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness also to 
the following : 
The Effect of the War on Life Assurance’, by H. Brown, B.A., 
F.LA., read before the Insurance Institute of London on 
20th December 1920. 
The Effects of the War on Life Assurance Organization’, by 
W. H. Aldcroft, F.L.A., read before the Insurance Institute 
of Manchester on 7th February 1922. 
The National Services rendered by Insurance Companies during 
the War °, by W. Crichton Slagg, Chairman of the Fire Offices’ 
Committee, read before the Insurance Institute of London on 
19th March 199%. 
I further very heartily acknowledge the courtesy shown me, 
in giving access to sources of research, by the Companies