not fail to react upon Belfast and be reflected in unemployment and diminished profits. . . . You, like Great Britain, are dependent in an exceptional degree upon foreign trade. . . . If we are to recover the level of activity attained before 1914, we must first of all re-establish throughout Europe the conditions of peace and stability which then existed."
These weighty words are, as need hardly be said, as true of England as of Belfast. And they surely go a very long way to disprove the contention that "a great deal of the present unemployment, possibly the whole of it, is directly due to the policy of deflation."
Sir Eric Geddes, who has earned all our gratitude by lopping with his historic axe the extravagance of our official wasters, and now speaks with added authority as President of the Federation of British Industries, was the next "star turn" in this performance. Speaking at a meeting of the Scottish members of the Federation at Glasgow on October 23, he doubted whether we could support, in addition to all the other difficulties, "the effort and sacrifice involved in a continuous appreciation of our currency." (In fact, the value of our currency as measured by the Economist Index Number has shown very moderate fluctuations since December 1921.) "We had," he said,
