FEBRUARY 1924

We have an admirable custom in this country by which once a year the overlords of the Big Five desist for a day from the thankless task of persuading their customers to accept loans and, putting on cap and gown, mount the lecturer's rostrum to expound the theory of their practice—a sort of saturnalia, during which we are all ephemerally equal with words for weapons. These occasions are of great general interest. But they are more than this. They have a representative significance; they hold up, as it were, financial fashion plates. What have they found to say this year about monetary policy?

Only one, Mr Walter Leaf, of the Westminster Bank, has refrained himself entirely. Each of the other four has had something to say. They fall into a pair of couples: one of which, Mr Beaumont Pease of Lloyds Bank and Sir Harry Goschen of the National Provincial Bank, feel that there is something improper, or at any rate undesirable, in thinking or speaking about these things at all; and the other of which, Mr Goodenough of Barclays Bank and Mr McKenna of the Midland Bank, so far from deprecating discussion, join in it boldly.