War-time financial problems

i68 STATE MONOPOLY IN BANKING

Savings Bank during the crisis which then impelled
many members of the public to hoard money, or
compelled them to take it out of their banks because
they did not find that the ordinary system of
payment by cheques was working with its usual ease.
Moreover, Mr Webb's point about what he calls
disinterested management—that is to say, the
management of banks by officers whose remuneration
bears no relation to the profit made on each piece
of business transacted—is one of the matters in
which English banking seems likely at least to be
modified. Sir Charles Addis, in the article already
referred to, calls attention in a very striking passage
to the efficiency of the administration of German
and English banks, and makes a comparison between
the remuneration given to the banking boards of the
two countries. The passage is as follows:—

" Scarcely second in importance to the financial
strength of a bank is the efficiency of its administration.
The German board of direction is composed, to an extent
unknown in England, of men possessed of professional
and technical knowledge. No one who has been present
at a meeting of German bank directors in Berlin, when
some foreign enterprise has been under consideration,
can have failed to be impressed by the animation with
which it was discussed, and by the expert and compara-
tive knowledge displayed by individual directors of the
enterprise itself and of the conditions prevailing in the
foreign country in which it was proposed to undertake it.
He may have been led to reflect ruefully upon the
different reception his project met with in his own
country. He will recall the meeting of the London
board ; the difficulty of withdrawing its members even
temporarily from their country pursuits and their