Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-11-08

yet that we can patch 1t up again In time
to prevent a disaster. We behold the
frightful paradox of a world in which
people are starving because there is too
much wheat and poverty stricken because
in certain countries there is too much
gold
The natural need of man to use his
hand and brain for his wife and family
is denied, because something has gone
wrong with the mechanism of exchange.
In many industrial countries there are
millions of men lounging about without
work or wages, kept miSerably by some
system of dole, or poor relief, or public
charity. Some of them have been work.
less for SO long that their spirit has gone
out Of them, and they look to the state
to go on keeping them.
Great nations like Germany, highly or
ganized, with industrious people, with an
enormous energy of production, are des-
perately pressed to save themselves from
bankruptcy and ruin. England, so rich
and powerful before the war, so stern
in financial integrity, so sure of stability
of the pound sterling was forced off the
gold standard and is still deeply anxious
for the immediate future, because of dis
loaned vast sums Of money which they
cannot repay. Even the United States,
which in the worlds imagination seemed
rich beyond dreams Of avarice and pros
porous beyond anything known in his
tory, has not lodged this economic
typhoon which has wrecked millions of
small homes.
Order has not yet been restored. The
machinery Of industrial life is out of gear.
What is the cause of all this? The
root cause, in my opinion, was the failure
of our leaders to understand that the
inherited wealth Of the world was par
TALLY destroyed by the war and that
paper money, pretending to represent
that wealth, was worthless. Democracy
in the victorious nations was tempted to
believe that the war need not be paid for
in further suffering and sacraf1ce, but
that there could be redistribution of
wealth to make every one prosperous.
Few people knew or had the courage to
tell them that much Of the worlds wealth
had been blown away by shell fire and
that war loans and bonds had nothing
behind them but the industry and COM
merce of the future.
England, as pointed out IL years ago,
though nobody believed it, spent during
the four and half years of war as much
as in the two and half centuries before
the war. She had nothing left but credit
based ON future trade and foreign loans.
All her war bonds were simply promises
to pay, provided her own people and her
debtors went on working and making
profits. The gold in the Bank of Eng
land as in the other banks of other coun-
tries did not represent real and absolute
wealth, as was believed in the old days
before the war. 1t only had value as a
token as long as it was kept moving by
the exchange of goods and service be-
tween one nation and another. When it
stopped moving it became worthless. It
stopped moving, except from one hole in
the ground to another hole in the ground.
\A/ITHOUT getting deep into the mys-
w teries Of gold, this at least seems
true-war debts, reparationS, war bonds
and loans from one country to another
were figures on bits of paper or promises
to pay by Jumps Of metal, which have no
meaning and will never have any mean
ing apart from the natural ebb and flow
of world trade, industry and employment
Of world populations, freely exchanging
the results of their labor and the credit
of nations with mutual trust in each
others stability and integrity.