ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART II

I 7 8

we were much as before. But under the pres-sure of hardship and excitement, we mighthave found out better ways of managing ouraffairs.

The present signs suggest that the bankersof the world are bent on suicide. At everystage they have been unwilling to adopt asufficiently drastic remedy. And by now mat-ters have been allowed to go so far that it hasbecome extraordinarily difficult to find any wayout.

It is necessarily part of the business of abanker to maintain appearances and to professa conventional respectability which is more thanhuman. Lifelong practices of this kind makethem the most romantic and the least realisticof men. It is so much their stock-in-trade thattheir position should not be questioned, thatthey do not even question it themselves until itis too late. Like the honest citizens they are,they feel a proper indignation at the perils ofthe wicked world in which they live,—whenthe perils mature; but they do not foresee them.A Bankers’ Conspiracy! The idea is absurd!I only wish there were one! So, if they aresaved, it will be, I expect, in their own despite.