Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/278

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state of trade and unemployment, can be to a large extent stabilized by appropriate action on the part of the Central Banks," therefore this so desirable stabilization may soon be expected. Was not there a Brussels Conference and did it not officially endorse balanced Budgets, cessation of finance by printing press, and inter-change of goods between nations, and have not most of the Governments which endorsed these ideals continued to spend more than their income from revenue and to maintain and increase restrictions on trade? And how long would it take before the Central Banks of Europe and America could really be got to work together and to hand over the control of their credit policy to the majority of a committee or whatever the machinery proposed might be?

Mr. Lloyd, however, leaves America out, on the curious ground that "so long as public opinion in the United States will insist on repayment of European debts not much progress can be made in monetary stabilization." Why America, whose interest in the war was so much remoter than Europe's, should be expected to lend huge sums for it and then remit them, he does not explain. Following Mr. Hawtrey and the Genoa Conference he proposes a European Monetary Convention