When Germany's creditors have granted the further moratorium, they will
have to turn to the United States and point out that the money -by: which Europe pays her debts there has ceased to flow from the source. And that will be the time to speak plainly about the metal in which alone the United States consents to be paid. So long as more and more gold- is accumulated in New York and Paris, it becomes nearer and nearer to physical impossibility to collect more and ship it across the Atlantic. Americans must -by now be prepared to hear this. Sir Harry Gloster Armstrong, whom they know well, put it plainly in a recent letter to The Times, but it was put. best of all in Lord Hugh Cecil's earlier letter. With irony, of which he is a master, he recalled that our debts were not contracted by eastward shipments of gold; but by credits opened in the United States, mainly for munitions and food ; let us open similar credits here and invite the United States to take our goods to that value. Well-instructed Americans must be seriously considering the results of stultifying the gold standard by preventing the practice on which it rests. If more than half the world is driven thereby on to a sterling or bi-metallic or other standard, those who have hoards of gold will learn to curse them as Dead Sea fruit.
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