form of legal tender paper currency of smaller denomination than the Bank of England note which, as everybody knows, was not uttered in amounts below five pounds. We also know that this recommendation slept peacefully in a Treasury pigeon-hole; and though we were fully prepared on the naval and military side to carry out all that we had promised, and all the details of shipping the expeditionary force to France had been thought out with the closest care by committees of railway and shipping men appointed by Lord Haldane, the financial side of the matter did not appear to have been got ready with the same foresight.
Gossip says that the necessary committee which was to deal with this matter was just about to get to work upon it when the war broke out, but this story seems too good to be true. In any case when the threat of war happened certain excitable folk wanted more currency—some because they were stupid enough to think it would be safer in their own custody than in that of their bankers, others because they expected a rapid rise in prices and wanted a store of money ready to lay in a stock of food. Consequently the banks were asked to hand out cash to an extent that they found inconvenient and fell back on their
