Burkhards:

He also observed over a century ago, “the state incurs debts for politics, war, and other higher causes and ‘progress’. . . . The assumption is that the future will honor this relationship in perpetuity. The state has learned from the merchants and industrialists how to exploit credit; it defies the nation ever to let it go into bankruptcy. Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief.” {Judgments on History and Historians (tr. Boston: 1958), p. 171 - cited in "Super Imperialism" by M. Hudson}.