awn from one bank finds its way
in due course to another, and that with regard to these mere "till
money" transfers there might be a considerable reduction in the amount
of cash required if all the banking of the country were in the hands
of one business, so that what was withdrawn from one branch would
be paid into another. But this fact would not alter the need which
compels a bank to keep considerable reserves in cash in order to
provide against the possibility of a run. A State bank, if the public
takes it into its head that it prefers to have a larger proportion of
currency in its own pocket rather than in its bank, may find itself
pulled at for cash just as vigorously as a bank managed by private
enterprise. This was shown in August, 1914, when very large sums were
withdrawn from the Post Office Savings Bank during the crisis which
then impelled many members of the public to hoard money, or compelled
them to take it out of their banks because they did not find that the
ordinary system of payment by cheques was working with its usual ease.

Moreover, Mr Webb's point about what he calls disinterested
management--that is to say, the management of banks by officers whose
remuneration bears no relation to the profit made on each piece of
business transacted--is one of the matters in which English banking
seems likely at least to be modified. Sir Charles Addis, in the
article already referred to, calls attention in a very striking
passage to the efficiency of the administration of German and English
banks, and makes a comparison between the remuneration given to the
banking boards of the two countries. The passage is as follows:--

"Scarcely second in importance to the financial strength of a
bank is the efficiency of its administration. The German board of
direction is composed, to an extent unknown in England, of men
possessed of professional and technical knowledge. No one who has
been present at a meeting of German bank directors in Berlin, when
some foreign enterprise has been under consideration, can have
failed to be impressed by the animation with which it was
discussed, and by the expert and comparative knowledge displayed
by individual directors of the enterprise itself and of the
conditions prevailing in the foreign country in which it was
proposed to undertake it. He may have been led to reflect ruefully
upon the different reception his project met with in his