This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

In the opinion of the Committee it is desirable that the issue of currency, by which presumably they mean legal tender currency, should be subject to strict legal regulation, wherein everybody will agree with them. If a nation says that a certain kind of money must be accepted by all creditors in payment of all debts, it certainly has to see to it that that currency is made as good as regulation can make it. But the Report went on to say that the management of banking should be left as free as possible from State interference. Here also it will carry with it the opinion of the great majority of people, especially since experience during and since the war has had the effect of disgusting most people with the results of Government control of everything. But naturally State socialists and others who believe in State control are in favour of putting the whole banking machinery into the hands of the Government, and this is now said to be one of the recognized planks in the platform of the Labour Party. Continental experience, however, seems to show that the last thing which Socialist Governments do is to nationalize anything.

The Committee stated its belief that the amalgamation of the two departments would inevitably lead in the end to State control of