economic position they occupied, employers, merchants and traders were being allowed perfect freedom to exploit to the fullest the nation's needs.'"
Could this disastrous system have been avoided altogether? The official attitude assumes that it was inevitable, and perhaps to a certain extent it was, with the financial leadership that we enjoyed. Neither the Government nor the people understood what was happening. Our rulers were not making Machiavellian use of monetary dodges to delude the people and dilute the currency, but were taking the line of least resistance through a difficult problem, and incidentally making reckless use of a delicate machine which they did not understand and producing consequences which they neither foresaw nor recognized. The public thought the rise in prices was a necessary consequence of war and naturally did not attempt to connect it with the expansion of bank deposits. Indeed, when this feature was noticed it was often hailed, even by men of business who might have known better, as a proof that we were somehow growing richer in spite of the war. If we had had a Government which understood finance and had courage enough to tell the people that war
