Borrowing and reduce
the Floating Debt--Return to the Old System--The Committee's Sane
Conservatism--A Sound Currency vital to National Recovery.

Among the many features of the late war (how comfortable it is to talk
about the "late war"!) that seem likely to astonish the historian
of the future, perhaps the thing that will surprise him most is the
behaviour of the warring Governments in currency matters. It is
surely, a most extraordinary thing after all that has been thought,
said and written about monetary policy since money was invented that
as soon as a great economic effort was necessary on the part of the
leading civilised Powers, they should all have fallen back on the old
mediaeval dodge of depreciating the currency, varied to suit modern
needs, in order to pay part of their war bill, and should have
continued this policy throughout the course of the war, in spite of
the obvious results that it was producing in the shape of unrest,
suspicion and bitterness on the part of the working classes, who very
naturally thought that the consequent rise in prices was due to the
machinations of unscrupulous capitalists who were exploiting them. It
is even possible that the historian of a century hence may ascribe to
this cause the beginning of the end of our present economic system,
based on the private ownership of capital, for it is very evident that
we have not yet seen the end of the harvest that this bitterness and
discontent are producing.

A less important but still very objectionable consequence of the flood
of currency and credit that the Government has poured out to fill a
gap in its war finance is the encouragement that it has given to a
host of monetary quacks who believe that all the financial ills of
the world can be saved if only you give it enough money to handle,
oblivious of the effect on prices of mere multiplication of claims to
goods without a corresponding increase in the volume of goods. These
enthusiasts have seen that during war a Government can produce money
as fast as it likes, and since they think that producing money makes
every one happy they propose to adopt this simple method for paying
off war debt, restarting trade and generally creating a monetary
millennium. How far their nostrums are likely to be adopted, no
one can yet say, but some of the utterances of our rulers make one
shudder.

Into this atmosphere of quackery and delusion the report of the
Committee on Currency and Foreign