DISCOVERY 



291 



appears to be suffering at present from acute trade 

 depression and unemployment for this very reason. 

 (2) The mere stopping of inflation, without any attempt 

 at deflation, will also bring about a complete change 

 in trade conditions, though rather more slowly. The 

 prices of commodities wOl tend to catch up to the 

 price of foreign currencies, thereby cutting off the 

 automatic bonus which had previously encouraged 

 exports. Wages will tend to catch up prices, thereby 

 eliminating an important cause of producers being 

 able to sell cheaply. Sales both at home and abroad 

 will be seriously reduced and employment will suffer 

 accordingly. (3) If inflation is continued in ever- 

 increasing doses, the evil day of a collapse in trade 

 can be postponed a little longer. Nevertheless, a 

 cjjange in trade conditions will come in spite of in- 

 flation ; the factors which are likely to bring it about 

 being as follows : 



(i) The growing difficulty, if not impossibility, of 

 obtaining sufficient credit from banks or capital from 

 investors with which to finance trade. In terms of 

 paper money, the sums required will be so enormous 

 that the means to provide adequate advances will be 

 lacking, even if the will to lend still exists. 



(ii) The diminishing home demand for goods, 

 brought about by an increasing tendency to employ 

 any surplus available in the purchase of foreign 

 currencies in prefei-ence to buj'ing goods or industrial 

 securities. Export restrictions may prevent goods 

 being sold to the best advantage ; shares may become 

 worthless owing to the collapse of business ; foreign 

 currencies appear to offer the best prospects of appre- 

 ciating and of being realisable in case of necessity. 



(iii) The growing difficulty of financing abroad 

 purchases of essential raw materials and food products. 

 In the early stages of inflation, considerable funds for 

 this purpose are secured by the sale to foreigners of 

 currency and securities which they buy for speculative 

 purposes in anticipation of an improvement in the 

 exchange. When foreign speculators lose confidence 

 in the ultimate recovery of the depreciated currency, 

 this source of financing necessary purchases abroad 

 dries up. 



(iv) The growing disorganisation of the national 

 finances, due to the absence of any steady basis on 

 which to levy taxation. 



(v) The growing difficulty of conducting trade in 

 terms of the rapidly depreciating currency. Business 

 will tend to be conducted in terms of foreign currencies 

 or by means of barter. In a relatively self-supporting 

 agricultural country, with a comparatively small 

 trade, this might not matter very much, but in an 

 industrial and commercial country largely dependent 

 on trade, the practical elimination of a home currency 

 system cannot fail very materially to diminish the 



amount of buying and selling, thereby correspondingly 

 reducing emploj'ment . 



The cumulative effect of these various hindrances to 

 trade, when once they have begun to make themselves 

 felt, as appears now to be the case in Germany, can 

 hardly fail to bring about a most unfavourable state 

 of affairs in a comparatively short time. In Austria 

 the stage of trade stagnation and collapse has already 

 been reached ; there inflation has lost its power to 

 stimulate trade. 



The stimulating eft'ect of inflation on trade can best 

 be compared with the stimulating effect of cocaine, 

 or some similar drug, on human beings. It has to be 

 applied in constantly increasing doses if it is to con- 

 tinue to stimulate, until ultimately the patient collapses 

 from an overdose. Thus the final effect of inflation 

 is to kill trade and to bring employment practically 

 to a standstill in an industrial and commercial com- 

 munity. 



The Attack on Mount 

 Everest ' 



By R. N. Rudmose Brown, D.Sc. 



The attack on the summit of Mount Everest (29,002 ft.) 

 began in 1 921, when Col. Howard-Bury led a recon- 

 naissance expedition whose aim was to discover the 

 best route by which the final attempt could be made. 

 Little accurate information about the I'egions lying 

 around Mount Everest was available. Approaching 

 from Tibet, the explorers found that the Rongbuk 

 glacier, which seemed the obvious line of approach, 

 afforded no practicable way, and that the western 

 slopes of the mountains were unclimbable. Attack 

 from the Kharta valley on the east seemed to be no 

 more promising. At length, towards the end of the 

 season, the problem was solved. The East Rongbuk 

 glacier leads to the north-east crest of the mountain. 

 The climbers reached the head of the East Rongbuk 

 glacier from the Kharta valley and ascended the 

 north-east col of Mount Everest, the Chang La, to 

 23,000 ft., that is to say, practically 6,000 ft. from 

 the summit. This point was reached at the end of 

 September. Bad weather cut short the climb, and 

 the attempt had to be abandoned, when at last the 

 road to the summit seemed to have been found. This 



1 The writer of these notes makes no claim to any special 

 knowledge of the subject or of mountaineering in general, 

 but somfe experience of glacier travelling and low tempera- 

 tures in Arctic and Antarctic regions enables him to appre- 

 ciate the conditions encountered on Mount Everest and its 

 approaches. Acknowledgments are made to despatches 

 pubhshed in The Times and to various articles in the Geo- 

 ■.•rapkical Journal. 



