paid off with the result that they, instead of holding Treasury Bills, would merely have held a longer dated security. It is true that if they had done so their power to call upon the Government to manufacture fresh money for them would have been reduced; but one of the chief purposes of the loan was to restore order into chaotic money conditions and enable the banks to get back to their real business of financing industry; this was to be done by paying back to them money which they had lent for the war, and this purpose was defeated in so far as the banks themselves were asked to contribute money to pay themselves off with. It was suggested that the banks should underwrite a certain amount of the loan and one of the last acts of Sir Edward Holden, just before he left for the holiday from which he never returned alive, was to refuse to do anything of the kind and at the same time to make application for an amount of the loan which was very much less than the Government had asked him to underwrite. The final result of these proceedings was that out of the £473,000,000 secured by the operation £92,000,000 were provided by the banks.
As the year 1919 went on our rulers began to wake out of the dreams into which they had drugged themselves and the country. In
