War-time financial problems

292 TIGHTENING FETTERS OF FINANCE

Order would be issued removing the retrospective
effect of the new regulation. And so amendment
was promised of a measure which would have had
very awkward and unjust effects. It may be argued
that it would only have affected people who had
done, during the war, what they were asked not to
do, namely, make issues without Treasury sanction.
If the old Committee had been a reasonable and
expeditious body this argument would have had
great weight. But, in view of its caprices and
dilatoriness, there was a good deal of excuse for
those who decided to do without Treasury sanction
and take the consequence of being unable to market
their securities on the Stock Exchange. To propose
to add a new penalty and cause the cancelling of all
the financial arrangements made in connexion with
such issues during four years was simply piling
blunder on blunder. Luckily, the protests of the
Government's own supporters sufficed to undo the
worst of the mischief; but the whole affair is only
another argument in favour of the earliest possible
ridding of finance and industry from control that is
so clumsily exercised.