MORE LIGHT NEEDED.
Such being the case, however, I suggest that there is all the greater need for a more active and intelligent interest being taken in the project by the banking community. It is clear that to Sir Josiah Stamp, and also, I believe, to some other economists, the threatened scarcity of gold and the general disturbance to the world level of prices are a menace to international prosperity and even to international peace, and I am far from challenging the assertion. Nevertheless, I suggest that if the menace is so great as to call for proposals, open at many points to questioning criticism, it is high time that the nature of the danger and the proposed preventive measures alike were presented in terms intelligible at least to bankers and business men, so that any measures adopted should have behind them the intelligent approval and support of those whose interests will be so directly affected. It must, I suppose, be taken for granted that on such occa- sions as this our leading bankers do discuSs in united counsels the pros and cons of proposed developments affecting the banking interests of the country, but the days seem quite gone by. when there was frank and free discussion by the bankers at public meetings at the Institute of what may be called the topical and vital queitions of the day, and we have nothing at all in this country answering to the Banking Conventions in the United States. I cannot help thinking that to some extent this lack of public discussion amongst bankers may be due in part to the long period during which London held such undisputed sway in banking, while' I think it is also to some extent the outcome of an excess of autocracy in our banking arrangements with a tendency to regard all matters affecting banking and high finance as subjects where secrecy is an invariable aid to efficiency. One result of thiS procedure has been an amount of ignor- ance on the part of the public concerning matters such as the -Gold Standard and the meaning of the foreign exchanges which I am convinced has not been for the good of the country.
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