Ill

THE RETURN TO GOLD

191

to raise the lira to its former value. Fortunatelyfor the Italian taxpayer and Italian business, thelira does not listen even to a dictator and cannotbe given castor oil. But such talk can postponepositive reform; though it may be doubted ifso good a politician would have propoundedsuch a policy, even in bravado and exuberance,if he had understood that, expressed in otherbut equivalent words, it was as follows: “Mypolicy is to halve wages, double the burden ofthe National Debt, and to reduce by 50 percent the prices which Sicily can get for her ex-ports of oranges and lemons.”

If the restoration of many European cur-rencies to their pre-war parity with gold isneither desirable nor possible, what are theforces or the arguments which have establishedthis undesirable impossibility as the avowedpolicy of most of them? The following are themost important:

1. To leave the gold value of a country's cur-rency at the low level to which war has driven it isan injustice to the rentier class and to others whoseincome is fixed in terms of currency , and -practicallya breach of contract; whilst to restore its valuewould meet a debt of honour.

The injury done to pre-war holders of fixedinterest-bearing stocks is beyond dispute. Realjustice, indeed, might require the restoration ofthe purchasing power, and not merely the goldvalue, of their money incomes, a measure whichno one in fact proposes; whilst nominal justice