Varied Views on Gold The final report of the League
of Nations Gold Dele- gation consists of majority and minority findings, Sir Henry Strakosch and Professor Gustav Cassel being among the dissentients. The main difference lies in the respective weight, alike in the sphere of causation and in that of remedy, attributed to the monetary factor. Little surprise will be felt among those who remember the Strakosch memoranda and the evidence given by their author before the Macmillan Committee, that the Minority Report finds in a maldistribution of gold, itself to a great extent the product of Reparations and War Debts policy, the chief cause of the depression, and in intentionally controlled expansion of credit, intentionally controlled with a view to a stabilization of prices at a slightly higher level, its obvious and indeed its only solution. All members of the Committee agree in regarding a general return to the gold standard as the ideal to be aimed at, the majority signatories indicating that in distinctly the more enthusiastic terms. But three conditions must first he realized. International trade must be freed from artificial trammels ; Reparations and War Debts must be settled ; and there must be signs of a general agree- ment to observe the rules of the gold standard game. If these and similar lessons are taken to heart the world may yet benefit from what at first appears a negative and disappointing report.
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