which began to arise under the pressure of disillusionment, did not receive the credit to which it was entitled. And there can be no doubt that official extravagance, commercial recklessness and miscalculations, private profligacy and the inflation that they all helped to produce, at least did something to ease and quicken the work of demobilization in the widest sense of the word, and the adjustment of industry from war to peace conditions.
So much had to be said about the temper and sentiment that ruled in the after-war period, because their effect upon the monetary matters which are the subject of this inquiry were like Sam Weller's knowledge of London, extensive and peculiar. Under their influence the expansion of currency and credit that have been shown to have been one of the most aggravated symptoms of bad war finance, continued with quickened inflammation, produced at once by the needs of a spendthrift Government, the cravings of industry and commerce, intoxicated by the prospect of a world-wide insatiable demand for goods at any price that might be asked, and the clamours of eager consumers, in full reaction from the privations, enforced and voluntary, of the war period. And so prices, after a momentary dip after the Armistice, went rollicking ahead for nearly a
