t
smile. "You remember that when I got pipped in France in '15, they
sent me out next time to Salonica. I hadn't been there very long
before the question of exchange cropped up. In the early days most
of us had English money only, and the villagers used to rook us
frightfully changing it. I remember sending my batman, MacGusgogh, to
a place for eggs, and he came back with the change for my Bradbury
in nickel. I had a good look at it, and on each coin was the mystic
inscription, 'DIHAP,' which is pronounced 'dinar.'

"'MacGusgogh,' I said, 'you pretend to be a Scotsman and yet you've
been diddled. This is Serbian money, and not worth a bean.'

"'Oh the deceitfu' deevils,' said he, 'there's neither truth nor
honesty in the leein' buddies, Sir. But here's your Bradbury, an', at
onny rate, we hae the eggs, Sir, for I paid for them wi' a label off
yin o' they Japaneesy beer bottles. It seemed an awfu' waste to spend
guid siller on folk that dinna ken when they see it.'"

I began to see the possibilities of the money market.

"I was round about there till the Armistice," Jones went on, "then I
drifted by stages to South Russia. All the Eastern countries live by
exchange. Practically the only trade they have is playing tennis with
each others' currency, and the headquarters of the industry in 1918
was South Russia. I thought I'd seen the limit of low finance when I'd
experienced the franc, lira, drachma, dinar, lev and piastre; but they
were all child's play to the rouble in 1918."

"I thought Russian money was all dud before that," I remarked.

"Not a bit of it," said Jones. "You see, it's not as if there were one
breed, so to speak, of rouble. There were KERENSKY roubles, and
Duma roubles, and NICHOLAS roubles, and every little town had a
rouble-works which was turning out local notes as hard as they, could
go. I missed a fortune there by inches."

"Tell me," I said, in response to his anecdotal eye.

"I had a job there which consisted of going backwards and forwards on
the railway between Otwiski and Triadropoldir in the Caucasus, a six
days' trip. The possibilities of the situation never struck me till
one day I, asked a shopman in Triadropoldir to give me my change in
Otwiski roubles--both towns had their own currency, of course. He gave
me five Otwiski roubles for one of his own town. I thought a bit about
that, and when I got back to Otwiski I tried the same thing, and found
I could get three Triadropoldir roub