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 bankers are the best political rulers, there can be no doubt that political rulers have lately shown amazing capacity for creating chaos in the world of banking. Under the stress of war they seized and warped for their own purposes the banking and currency system of this country and of all other countries engaged in it and of many of those that were only affected indirectly, with the result that a system which had been brought to something very near to perfection is now

a melancholy mockery of its former beauty and efficiency. Makers of this chaos claim that it was a necessary part of the cost and consequences of war. If so, it is only one more joint in the harness of our so-called civilization, which had not even taught us how to conduct mutual slaughter on a world-wide scale, without very nearly wrecking the means by which we used to buy and sell. In some countries, indeed, the wrecking process may be said to have been complete. In August 1923 the German mark fell to about a two millionth of its pre-war value in sterling, being dealt in, or quoted, at 40 million to the pound.

In England the achievements of our rulers