21 NOVEMBER 1931, Page 39

That was it. All the brightness ; all the laughter

and the merriment of the present ; the fond hopes for the future ; the fortunes that seemed assured ; the old age so comfortably provided for : so that was all it was, just inflation ! The bright new world iridescent with the sunlit colours of the soap bubble ! To think that it had to go ! Of course it had to go. It .couldn't last. Sooner or later there was bound to come a wave of depression. That is always the fate of our humanity. It no sooner gets set in any one direction than a wave of something knricks it into another. It is like a tired swimmer stag- gering ashore in front of a rising tide.