dd thereto letters of credit using
the formal words "confirmed" or "irrevocable." But the category of
enforceable simple promises defies systematic treatment as obstinately
as the actionable pacts in Roman law. Successive additions at
different times in the endeavor of courts to hold men to their
undertakings, in view of the social interest in the security of
transactions and the jural postulates of the civilization of the day,
proceed on all manner of different theories and different analogies
and agree only in the result--that a man's word in the course of
business should be as good as his bond and that his fellow men must be
able to rely on the one equally with the other if our economic order
is to function efficiently. It is evident that many courts consciously
or subconsciously sympathize with Lord Dunedin's feeling that one can
have no liking for a doctrine which enables a promisor to snap his
fingers at a promise deliberately made, fair in itself, and in which
the person seeking to enforce it has a legitimate interest according
to the ordinary understanding of upright men in the community. It is
significant that although we have been theorizing about consideration
for four centuries, our texts have not agreed upon a formula of
consideration, much less our courts upon any consistent scheme of what
is consideration and what is not. It means one thing--we are not
agreed exactly what--in the law of simple contracts, another in the
law of negotiable instruments, another in conveyancing under the
Statute of Uses and still another thing--no one knows exactly what--in
many cases in equity.

Letters of credit afford a striking illustration of the ill-adaptation
of our American common law of contract to the needs of modern business
in an urban society of highly complex economic organization. Well
known abroad and worked out consistently on general theories in the
commercial law of Continental Europe, these instruments came into use
in this country on a large scale suddenly during the war. There was no
settled theory with respect to them in our books and the decisions
warranted four or five views leading to divergent results in
matters of vital moment to the business man who acted on them.
Characteristically the business world set out to make of them formal
contracts of the law merchant by the use of certain distinctive words
which gave the instruments character and made their nature clear to
those who inspected them anywh