208

ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

of pre-war policy and a compromise betweendiscrepant aims.

Those who advocate the return to a goldstandard do not always appreciate along whatdifferent lines our actual practice has been drift-ing. If we restore the gold standard, are weto return also to the pre-war conceptions ofbank-rate, allowing the tides of gold to playwhat tricks they like with the internal pricelevel, and abandoning the attempt to moderatethe disastrous influence of the credit-cycle onthe stability of prices and employment? Orare we to continue and develop the experimentalinnovations of our present policy, ignoring the“bank ratio” and, if necessary, allowing un-moved a piling up of gold reserves far beyondour requirements or their depletion far belowthem?

In truth, the gold standard is already a bar-barous relic. All of us, from the Governor ofthe Bank of England downwards, are nowprimarily interested in preserving the stabilityof business, prices, and employment, and arenot likely, when the choice is forced on us,deliberately to sacrifice these to the outworndogma, which had its value once, of ^3 : 17 : 10Jper ounce. Advocates of the ancient standarddo not observe how remote it now is from thespirit and the requirements of the age. A regu-lated non-metallic standard has slipped in un-noticed. It exists. Whilst the economists dozed,the academic dream of a hundred years, doffingits cap and gown, clad in paper rags, has crept