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 distinction between advances made to customers for purposes of production and those made to furnish them with funds to lend to Government. The figures of the Bank of England's return were more than usually obscure during the war period owing to a system then adopted by which any surplus balances that the other banks held were taken from them by the Bank of England and lent to the Government in the form of Ways and Means advances. According to strict book-keeping these operations should have been shown in the weekly return and would have greatly increased the Bank of England's liabilities and assets. But in fact this was not done and so the Bank return was more than ever a cryptogram rather than a guide, and those who patiently week by week worked out the proportion of its cash Reserve and its liabilities were at once the victims and publishers of a deception which was, if it effected anything towards maintaining our financial prestige abroad, justified by the seriousness of the struggle and the importance of financial prestige to its winning.

A more important effect of anxiety to maintain our financial prestige abroad was the necessity that it was believed to impose on