n between volume and
value. Moreover, it follows also from the "Quantity Theory of Money,"
which he holds, that if he applies his remedy and multiplies currency
and credit as fast as he appears to want to, the result will be a
still further depreciation in the buying power of money, and a further
rise in prices and an increase in all the bitterness, discontent,
suspicion, and strikes that the rise in prices has already caused
during the war. Is this a prospect to pray for? Surely if we want to
enjoy "boundless wealth and prosperity" the way to do so is to turn
out goods--things to eat and wear and enjoy--and not to multiply
money, thereby merely depreciating its value, on Mr Kitson's own
admission. He thinks that "nothing but an abundant supply of currency
in the shape of legal tender notes and bank credit, could have enabled
us to undertake successfully such unprecedented burdens" as we have
borne during the war. But it may equally well be argued that we have
borne these burdens because we worked harder than ever before to turn
out the needed stuff, organised better, used our machinery to its
full power, and spent less of our product on luxuries; and that the
abundant currency, by forcing up prices, immensely increased the
cost of the war and produced industrial friction which several times
brought us unpleasantly close to disaster.

Mr Kitson, however, uses the "Quantity Theory of Money"--the doctrine
that the value or buying power of money varies according to its
quantity in relation to that of the goods that it buys--chiefly as a
stick wherewith to beat the Gold Standard. He shows, very easily and
truly, that it is absurd to suppose that the value of the monetary
gold standard is invariable. Thereby he is only beating a dead horse,
for no such argument is nowadays put forward. The variability of the
gold standard of value is acknowledged, whenever a fluctuation in the
general level of commodity prices is recorded. But gold is the basis
of our credit system, and of those of all the economically civilised
countries of the world, not because its value is believed to be
invariable, but because it is the commodity which is universally
accepted, in such countries and in normal times, in payment of debts.
This quality of acceptability it has got largely by custom and
convention. Mr Kitson speaks of the "selection of gold by the world's
bankers as the basis for money and credit." But it was selected as
currency by common c