this
means any demands for new currency would operate in the normal way to
reduce the reserve of the Banking Department, "which would have to be
restored by raising money rates and encouraging gold imports," and so
a step would have been taken to getting back to a business basis in
the currency system and away from the profligate printing-press policy
of the war period.

Such are the suggestions made by this distinguished body for the
restoration of our currency. Little has been said against them in the
way of serious criticism, but their conservative tendency and the
fact that they practically recommend a return to the _status quo_ has
caused some impatience among the financial Hotspurs who proposed to
begin to build a new world by turning everything upside down. In
matters of finance this process is questionable, interesting as the
result would undoubtedly be. To get to work on tried lines and then,
when once industry and finance have recovered their old activity, to
amend the machine whenever it is creaking seems to be a more sensible
plan than to delay our start until we have fashioned a new heaven
and earth, and then very probably find that they do not work. If the
machine is to be set moving, it can only be done by close co-operation
between the Bank of England and the other banks which have grown by
amalgamation into institutions the size of which seem likely to
make the task of central control more difficult than ever. On this
important point the Committee is curiously silent. But it recommends
the adoption of a suggestion made by a Committee of Bankers, who
proposed that banks should in future be required "to publish a monthly
statement showing the average of their weekly balance-sheets during
the month." (Will this requisition apply to the Bank of England?) This
is a welcome suggestion as far as it goes, but unless something is
done by co-operative action to make the Bank rate more automatic in
its influence on the actions of the other banks, the difficulty of
making it effective seems likely to be considerable.

Getting the currency right is a most important matter for the future
of our financial position. Another is the question of our debt to
foreigners. Most of this debt we owe to America, and we only owe it
because we had to finance our Allies. We surely ought to be able to
arrange with America that anything that we have to do in giving our
Allies time before asking for repayment they also should do fo