War-time financial problems

302 MONEY OR GOODS?

deference for foreign prejudice, for the settlement
of foreign trade balances, but make as much paper
money as you like for home use. As our legal
tender money is to be " divorced entirely from its
alliance with gold " it clearly cannot be convertible
into gold, So that apparently we shall have a
paper pound and a gold pound (the latter for foreign
use) with no connection between them. This stage
of economic barbarism has been left behind now even
by some of the South American repiiblics. The
paper pound, based on the national credit, can be
multiplied as fast as our legislators think fit. If
they do not multiply it fast enough, Mr Kitson will
tell them that they are strangling trade, because
the volume of production is limited by the amount
of money available. At the same time bank credits
will be multiplied indefinitely because, as was shown
in the November Supplement, Mr Kitson supports a
view that the average business man holds (according
to him) that he ought to have a legal right to as
much credit as he wants. With the Government
printing paper to please its supporters, with the
banks obliged by law to give credit to every one who
asks for it, and with prices soaring on every addition
to currency and credit, what a country this will be
to live in, and what a life will be led by those who
have to compile and work out tFe index numbers
of the prices of commodities ! Some of us, perhaps,
will prefer the jog-trot conservatism of Lord Cun-
liffe's Currency Committee, who in their recently
issued report * (which every one ought to read)
* Cd. 9182, 2d,