Hawtrey, whose belief in the overwhelming influence of monetary conditions on trade is carried to such amazing lengths in his brilliant and interesting works. In his Monetary Reconstruction, page 142, he says that "even lending money without interest would not help, if the borrower anticipated a loss on every conceivable use that he could make of the money. . . . But such a condition of stagnation is not possible except in the course of reaction from a riot of inflation. If the inflation is prevented, the stagnation will never arise." It must indeed be pleasant to possess a mind like Mr. Hawtrey's that can arrive at this completely confident certainty about matters which to ordinary mortals seem to be so full of doubts, difficulties and complications. How does he know that if there has been no previous inflation there can be no—business stagnation? Might not stagnation arise from political or social upheaval or apprehension thereof, or from the effect of a plague or the failure of a harvest which might seriously disorganize the business of the world?
Surely the price that enterprise has to pay for the use of money is only one among very many items that it has to consider when it is deciding whether to spread or take in canvas, or just to "keep her so," and it is a big assump-
