Just after the issue of the Cunliffe Committee Report another important Report was produced by a Committee appointed at the end of 1917 to consider whether the normal arrangements for the provision of financial facilities for trade by the existing banking and other financial institutions would be adequate to meet the needs of British industry during the period immediately following the end of the war, and, if not, by what emergency arrangement they should be supplemented. This Committee's report was dated November 21, 1918, and it made some interesting observations concerning the working, not of our monetary system as a whole as regulated by the Bank Charter Act, but of our banking system in its relation to the provision of the needs of its customers for credit.
"Having regard," it said, "to the fact that the very great expansion in credit which has taken place during the war will probably persist for a considerable period after its termination, we are unanimously of opinion that, if the reconstitution of industry and commerce is to be achieved on permanent and sound economic lines, some restriction must be imposed at as early a date as possible upon the creation of additional credit by the restoration of an effective gold standard. To attempt to re-build
