Silent for many a week of the Bank of England's discount rate (TIME, Aug. 19), Governor Montagu Collet Norman last week sent a uniformed messenger scurrying through the bank's corridors, bearing over his head a sign: "BANK RATE 6 1/2%."

Quick to criticize this move were English businessmen, struggling to maintain the slow revival of British industry, for a higher rate means higher credit charges. On the other hand London bankers, nervous over the long and steady drain of gold from England, saw in the bank's announcement the only possible way of bolstering the gold reserve, down -L-20,000,000 this year and now -L-17,000,000 below the irreducible minimum of -L-150,000,000, set by the Cunliffe Currency Commission in 1919.

Contrary to this belief of the London bankers, many a continental and U. S. financier expressed the opinion that while the high rate of call money persists in New York only another rise in the English rate can halt the drainage of bullion.