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 The Committee also observed that it will of course be necessary "that the Bank Rate should be raised to and maintained at a figure sufficiently high to secure the earliest possible retirement of the excess issue." It will be remembered that before the war began the nerves of the public, already quite sufficiently harassed by the closing of the Stock Exchange and other untoward events, were disagreeably startled by a sensational rise in the Bank Rate from 4 per cent. to 10 per cent. in the course of a week. This was because according to precedent the Bank Act could not be suspended without a 10 per cent. Bank Rate, and so, though the rise in Bank Rate did not do anybody any good at the time, and had not the smallest effect in checking demands for credit, it had to be carried out, in order to fulfil the requirements of the dreamy archeologists in whose eyes it was above all important, when Europe rocked, that a monetary crisis should be carried out strictly according to precedent and with due observance of the ceremonial hallowed by tradition.

After prolonged calculations the Committee came to the conclusion that the normal minimum amount of the central gold reserve to be aimed at in the first instance in the after-war period should be £150,000,000—an amount