Noxious Pest

COMMONWEALTH (British Commonwealth of Nations)

The Right Honorable William Maxwell Aitken, well known as Lord Beaverbrook, notorious as "the Hearst of England," blatant chief proprietor of the London Daily Express, etc., enlivened the pages of that raucous news organ last week with an attack on Britain's resumption of the gold standard (TIME, May 11 and 18, 1925) :

"The gold standard reminds me of a noxious little pest called the jigger which infests the coffee-growing areas of the West Indies. It enters the human body through any abrasion in the foot. It circulates with the blood and finally comes to the lower part of the stomach. There it multiplies and feeds voraciously on whatever its victim eats. In order to satisfy its demands the patient himself eats enormously of all kinds of cereals until his stomach becomes hideously distended. There is only one cure and that is to drink eucalyptus, which kills the jigger.

"This remedy is infallible. The only trouble is that in most cases the eucalyptus chokes the patient to death. It is easy to draw a parallel. The gold standard was an infallible remedy for financial dissension. Unfortunately it shows every sign of choking British trade to death. The coal strike is a direct result of the reimposition of the gold standard. Costs of sales abroad are being raised by this. Costs of production here had to be diminished in order to compete in the world market."

That meant a reduction in the miners' wages, and the miners struck. . .

"It is curious to reflect that the American debt settlement which has just been exposed to the cold blasts of unpopularity in Great Britain was entered into solely as an inevitable preliminary to restoring that standard. Otherwise we should have waited like sensible people and made a satisfactory all-round settlement with the U. S. and with our European debtors."

Continuing in wrathful vein, Lord Beaverbrook took as his text the reputed failure of the London firm of Furness Withy & Co. to purchase the White Star Line for more than -L-6,000,000 because the transfer of such a sum to the White Star Line's U. S. owners might have depressed the pound in relation to the dollar. Pointing the moral, Lord Beaverbrook concluded: "The idea of enforcing the return to the gold standard was that we should be able to buy on equal terms in America.

"The actual fact would appear to be that we dare not buy the American ships lest we should depress exchange."

Though the effects of Britain's reversion to the gold standard are interpreted controversially by various experts, one net result is distinguishable. Great Britain has restored the inter-Imperial parity of her currency with that of the Dominions and placed the Empire as a whole on a fiscal equilibrium. That watchful care must be exercised and some sacrifices made until this equilibrium is permanently established goes without saying. The British bourgeoisie, unsettled by nothing so much as by an unstable currency, have overwhelmingly demanded that the Government pursue its present course.

*The sum appropriated by Parliament for the expenses of the sovereign and his house-hold.