LAND AND WATER. 
January 27, 1916. 
^OW~W 
ah/oad ! If, for c\anii)li\ a trade boom in Germany or 
America created an urgent demand for gold, the only 
method the Bank of England possessed for retaining its 
reser\'es was to raise the Bank Rate. Whilst this, tended 
to cut off some of the foreign demand it also jvnalised 
our own people by taxing their banking facilities. It 
became a double-edged sword tiiat cut both ways, and 
althougli it has proved a wonderful instrument for booming 
the value of bank shares, it has proved a dead-weight 
upon the backs of our producing classes and a serious 
brake upon the wheels of industry. 
Our economic system has been ingeniously illustrated 
by this inverted pyramid. It is supported upon its gold 
apex, which carries all 
the credit of the coun- 
try. Upon this we have 
reared all our trade, 
manufactures and busi- 
ness generally. The 
amount of gold has 
been a very varying 
quantity — but in any 
case it has represented 
an extremely insignifi- 
cant sum in proportion to the load it has had to 
:arry. Just prior to the war the total amount of gold 
available throughout the country was estimated 
at less thnn £"60,000,000. The volume of credit resting 
upon this ran into hundreds of millions. The bank 
deposits alone— subject to withdrawal at sight — was at 
least ten times all the gold available. It is safe to say 
that altogether, the volume of credit redeemable in gold 
on demand on August ist, iqi4, was more than 25 times 
all the gold that the bankers could possibly scrape 
together ! The truth is, that ever since the passing of the 
Bank Charter Act, every bank in this country has been 
doing business on a margin of bankruptcy ! 
The engineer who constructs a bridge or machine, 
estimates the sizes and chooses his material on the basis 
of a margin of safety. He first calculates the maximum 
strains to which the bridge or machine will be subjected. 
He then multiplies this by two or three and builds accord- 
ingly. The Bank Charter Act compelled our bankers 
to adopt a margin of risk. No provision was made for 
any extraordinary event, such as war or panic. The one 
door of safety was— suspending the Act. This was actu- 
ally done on three different occasions during the life of 
its' famous author, with the result that the nation was 
saved from bankruptcy on each occasion. Imagine a 
Government passing an Act ostensibly for the protection 
of the public, which has to be suspended periodically to 
rave the nation from its disastrous effects ! 
But the danger to which this Act exposed the country 
was not merely apparent in times of war crises. It 
was liable to arise at any moment through foreign events 
which otherwise would "have been of little or no conse- 
quence to us. The removal of the cotton crops in Egypt 
or in the United States, the speculations of financial 
" plungers " in New York, Chicago or San Francisco, the 
decision of a Board of Railroad Directors in Argentina 
to extend their system, a presidential election in the 
United States, and'hundreds of similar events which have 
little or no direct relation to our home trade — any one of 
these was sufficient to affect our bank-rate by causing 
withdrawals of gold from the Bank of England and to 
influence our commerce disastrously. So sensitive is our 
money market, in consequence of this stupid Bank Act, 
that we actually experience greater and more acute 
financial disturbances on account of foreign events than 
is experienced in the countries themselves in which these 
events are happening. 
When the Germans were beseiging Paris m 1870. our 
bank-rate stood at 10 per cent., whilst the rate of the Bank 
of l'"rance was only 7 per cent. The German Minister of 
I'i nance has boasted that no such panic occurred in 
Brrlin when war was declared in August, 1014. as that 
which was experienced in London at the same time. The 
wond<r is not so much that our banks collapsed at the 
more rumour of war. but that they have been enabled to 
( ontinue so successfully for so long on so unstable at 
foimdation. Can we" wonder that foreigners have 
christoned the British banking ' system, the " Grent 
Confidence Game " ? 
iro li( coniinued.) 
BRITAIN'S FIGHTING FORGES. 
Military brevity', wliidi characterises right from be- 
ginning to" end. Field-Marslial Sir Evelyn Wood's new 
work (Our Fighting Services. Cassell and Co., 21s. nei). 
is rendered absolutely necessary by the magnitude ol 
the subject, for the' book is no less than a history 
of the Navy and Army- especially the Army— of Britain 
from the Norman Conquest to the end of the South African 
War. Since the book concerns tlie way in which the " fightmg 
forces " made tiie Empire, reference to the present war is 
ver>' wisely omitted, for in the first place this present war 
has" little connection with Empire-making, and in the second 
place it is impossible to write history without historical 
perspective, either in sevenpenny parts or in volume form. 
To many readers the first part, dealing with the rise of 
the Navy and Army from the time of the Conquest to the end 
of the Tudor period, will prove the most interesting, though 
Hastings and Crecv are dismissed in brief paragraphs. The 
author has been at pains to trace the tactical developments of 
each period, and to show the modifications of method arising 
out of the changes in armament. On the framework of 
history he has built up a book essentially militarj^ in form 
and principle. He has not, however, neglected the romance 
of military histor\-, and- its stirring incidents. Beside the 
story of the death" of Wolfe is set the equally pathetic story 
of the death of Montcalm ; the anti-chmax to the stor^' of 
Hawke's daring naval strategy is given in a few lines that 
relate how in London the great commander's effig>' was being 
burnt in the belief that he had failed in his duty. One of the 
chief features of the book is the way in which the salient 
features of each event are seized on and presented, giving the 
reader adequate grasp on each phase of the great stor>'. 
In the chapters devoted to the oft-described Waterloo 
campaign, the events leading up to the great battle are given 
their due prominence, making of the campaign a coherent 
whole, and this is characteristic of the whole work. It is the 
strategist, as well as the historian, who writes, omitting 
irrelevant detail, and careful that no operation with a direct 
bearing on the historic sequence shall lack its due place. 
Thus the whole of the Marlborough campaigns do not occupy 
half the space given to the Peninsular War, for the former 
were barren of result, while the latter had direct bearing on 
the downfall of Napoleon and the re-making of Europe. 
Sound military judgment is united with conscientious accuracy 
in the compilation of this story of the fighting services, and 
the comprehensive bibliography gi\cn at the end of the book 
shows that it is intended as an introduction to the study of 
military' history, a purpose which it worthily fulfils. 
Expressions of personal opinion are few in these pages ; 
the bare story is given, and the reader may form his own 
opinion, for the book is a record of duty done, not a critical 
study. In this, as in tha end which such a book serves, more 
especially among the younger generation, it is consonant with 
its author's career. 
The Machine-Gunners' Pocket Book, by " An M.G.O* 
in Flanders " (Graham and Lathom, is. 6d. net), is an 
encyclopsedia of the Vickers or Maxim machine-gun. In 
addition to instructions on fire direction and control, the 
book gives full details of the mechanism of the gun, and of 
the action of the mechanism, with causes of stoppage of fire 
and the method of remedying them. It forms a handy little 
training manual for machine-gun officers, and is one that 
every officer or N.C.O. on machine-gun work ought to possess. 
A cheap edition of The Grenadiers of Potsdam, by J. R. 
Hutchinson, issued by Messrs. Sampson, Low and Co., at is. 
net, provides evidence of the fact that the Prussian bully 
is not, as is sometimes alleged, a growth of the last forty 
years, but has been evolving since the time of the first 
Frederick William of Prussia. The way in which the giant 
grenadiers were crimped and kidnapped makes interesting 
reading, and the story of the regiment, fully told in this book, 
forms a good commentary on Prussian methods, especially 
when it is remembered that the book was written before the 
war, and thus is without the prejudice the war has caused tc 
appoar in the work of many writers. 
Published at 2s. net by Messrs. Holden and Hardingham, 
Biggs and Potter, by J. Beard Francis, provides the class of 
light comedy that would make the book a welcome one in a 
ho.^pital ward, or for any occasion on which the object is to 
divert the mind of the reader rather than to instruct him. 
The doings of Higgs — and Potter — at their seaside boarding 
house are decidedly amusing, and the obvious garrulousness 
of the author, a sort of free and easy method of writing that 
brings in a multitude of side issues, adds to the humour of the 
work. Both Higgs and Potter are worth knowing— in print- 
