War-time financial problems

FINANCIAL HOTSPURS 241

Committee. It observes that there would be some
awkwardness in transferring the issue to the Bank of
England before the future dimensions of the fiduciary
issue have been arrived at; and it suggests that
during the transitional period any expansion in
Treasury notes that may take place should be
covered, not as now, by Government securities, but
by Bank of England notes taken from the Bank.
By this means any demands for new currency would
operate in the normal way to reduce the reserve of
the Banking Department, " which would have to be
restored by raising money rates and encouraging
gold imports," and so a step would have been taken
to getting back to a business basis in the currency
system and away from the profligate printing-press
policy of the war period.

Such are the suggestions made by this distin-
guished body for the restoration of our currency.
Little has-been said against them in the way of
serious criticism, but their conservative tendency
and the fact that they practically recommend a
return to the status quo has caused some impatience
among the financial Hotspurs who proposed to begin
to build a new world by turning everything upside
down. In matters of finance this process is question-
able, interesting as the result would undoubtedly be.
To get to work on tried lines and then, when once
industry and finance have recovered "their old
activity, to amend the machine whenever it is
creaking seems to be a more sensible plan than to
delay our start until we have fashioned a new heaven
and earth, and then very probably find that they