o
Messrs. Hands & Co., who deal in foreign money at Charing Cross. On the
way I passed the shop of a tailor, who had placarded on his shop window
the announcement that he would give a hundred thousand roubles to every
customer who bought a suit of clothes from him. He added that at the
pre-war rate of exchange the one hundred thousand roubles would be
worth ten thousand pounds. He did not add that they were at that time
worth only two shillings.[13] On arriving at my destination, I asked to
see specimens of the most debased currencies and eventually laid out
ten shillings,[14] or, to be exact, 9_s_/10_d_. Here is the bill:

Ten German marks cost me one shilling
A hundred Austrian crowns cost me one and sixpence
A hundred Polish marks cost me sixpence
Twenty-five Russian (_Czar_)[15]
roubles (1909) cost me sixpence
Two Italian lire cost me eightpence
Two Greek drachmas cost me eightpence
Two Roumanian lei cost me sixpence
Five Yugoslav dinars[16] cost me one shilling
Ten Czechoslovakian crowns cost me one shilling
Five Bulgarian levas cost me sixpence
Five Finnish marks cost me one shilling
Five Esthonian marks cost me one shilling
Five Latvian roubles cost me sixpence

[13] A month or two later they were not worth a shilling. The
Russian Soviet Government was offering two hundred thousand
roubles for one pre-war silver rouble!

[14] Two dollars.

[15] Twenty-five Soviet roubles would have been dear at a
farthing.

[16] On this note is stamped 20 _Kruna_ to indicate that five
dinars exchanged for twenty Austrian crowns.

To show that my friend, the exchange dealer, made a decent profit out
of this retail transaction, I quote some of his selling rates for the
day on which he based his charges:

_Rates of
Exchange_ _June 29, 1921_
Austrian paper crowns 2400-2600 for L1
Finnish marks 220-240 for L1
German marks 265-275 for L1
Polish marks 6000 (selling rate) for L1
Greek drachmas 62-65 for L1