WHY MARS DID NOT SIGNAL!
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—No better example of the absurdity and wastefulness of our financial system could be given than the energy and expense involved in recovering some £5,000,000 of gold from the Laurentic ' which was sunk during the War. Scores of men have been employed for several years in raising this useless metal from the sunken vessel, where it would doubtless have been quite safe from the attacks of burglars and money sharks for ages to come. Now that it has been salvaged it will be buried once more in some far less secure underground vault, involving considerable expense for maintaining its safety. Even though it be sent to New York in part settle- ment of our debt to America, the same fate awaits it—burial.
Sisyphus, with his rolling stone, was in no sense more ignorant and foolish than our modern statesmen and financiers. If it be urged that this gold will assist trade by increasing the world's purchasing power, my reply is that this function of gold might have been more cheaply and as readily made available by the issue of five million one-pound treasury notes with the Laurentic's ' gold safely stored by Father Neptune as security. Of course, the same thing applies to the world's gold-mining operations. Considering that there is enough uncoined gold stored away in bank vaults to supply the arts in which it is employed for two or three centuries, it is evident that but for the silly superstition which is responsible for making gold the legalized, debt-paying medium, every gold mine in the world would close down.
Supposing our planetary neighbours, the Martians, to be —as sometimes represented—a highly intelligent people, one can readily imagine with what amazement, if not incredulity, they would receive the information that an industry which our bankers regard as one of the most vital to the world's inhabitants consists in the employment of thousands of men to dig up a yellow metal from certain parts of the earth and to transport, bury and guard it in other parts. After learning further that with the discovery of fresh supplies of this supposedly magic metal factories become busy, trade improves, and the people generally become more prosperous (notwith- standing that it performs no part whatever in the production of wealth, and that even in exchange gold performs no function which cannot and, as a matter of daily experience, is not. better performed by pieces, of paper), our neighbours could-
come to no other conclusion than that earth's inhabitants must be stark mad. Perhaps this knowledge may have been already conveyed to Mars by some mysterious means, and may account for their refusal to respond to our recent signals, not wishing to have intercourse with a planetary lunatic asylum.
In an article published over twenty years ago, I suggested that the gold-standard delusion might be worked far more economically than has hitherto been customary by transporting to and burying all the gold of the world at some central point, say, The Hague—or better still, the middle of the Pacific, where it would be quite secure—and issuing notes against it. These notes could be made international and would serve to transfer the ownership of the gold from one country or person to another, which is all that is needed. Since we cannot eat gold, nor wear it (save for ostentation),. ownership is all that is required. Here is a plan by which. the American bankers may easily relieve themselves of the gold with which they tell us. America is " being choked,"
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