Mr. Neville Chamberlain should nave sent the House of Commons Fnappily to recess with his encourage ing of the country's. fin The Chancellor of the Exchequer 1s Jnot wont to indulge in extravagant hopes so his restrained optimism must have been specially heartening. Home trade had not reached saturation point; foreign trade showed an upward trend: those were his. chief points of comment on the commercial outlook. In view of the attention paid by Sir Stafford Cripps to the control of the Bank of England, Mr, [Chamberlain's exposition of the ations between ¢he Treasury and the Bank was timely. He showed, indeed, that the two authorities were ]working in close accord. Much ill-informed criticism has been current regarding the Bank of England's al-Heged autocracy and not all of it has Jcome from Socialists. Mr. Montagu Norman has been pictured as the master-mind dominating the whole of the financial life of Great Britain and being responsible for the inability lof British statesmen to arrive at some tour de force for dodging the im: plications of the economic. imbroglio. Socialists on their side have suggest-fed that if the Government were a [Socialist Government and had con-{rol of Mr. Norman and his bank, something really would be done to put capitalism in its place, Beside this fantasy Mr. Chamberlain's obser= tions may sound drab and uninspitug. "Yet it may be surmised that the close touch maintained by the Treasury with the Bank is by no means inconsistent with due regard for the jcountry's best interests. Nothing could be worse than for banking to be brought directly into the political arena, Economies may not be an exact science but it would be postively disastrous to associate It in an unbreakable yoke with so empirical science as that of polities. Once Political influences secured a hold of the country's banking policy, condence would: wilt and the economic state of the people would inevitably suffer. That is the plain reply to Sir [Stafford Cripps, Mr, Chamberlain did [well to give i for due digestion with the plum-puddings, turkey and mince= F pies of the festive season.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.