In recent years there has been a remarkable change in the attitude of business men towards the problem of the price level. In 1928 Sir Josiah Stamp wrote:

To-day, in English-speaking countries, the price level has come to be the chief preoccupation. Indeed, there are many business men who are beginning to have a sneaking feeling that perhaps it is the gold standard which is academic and highbrow.

It is easy enough to understand the impatience of the Anglo-Saxon world with the gold standard. It has about it something of the logic and precision which appeals to the Latin rather than to the Anglo Saxon temperament. Your Anglo-Saxon distrusts a solution which appears simple, and looks askance at logical arguments, feeling, perhaps, how inadequate is logic to grapple with the problems of a complex world.

Perhaps it is for this reason that the Latin countries – France, Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium – continue to cling, with Holland, to the beautiful simplicity of the gold standard, while the Anglo-Saxons have started off on a voyage to discover a new currency. It may not be merely a coincidence that the countries which have lightly set out on this quest are those which have had less experience of inflation.