Now the first point to notice is that the result of this complicated process is exactly the same as if the Government itself had provided forty millions, in Currency Notes, with the important exception that the public pays 4 or 5 per cent per annum on the forty millions, instead of merely paying the cost of printing the Currency Notes. The effect on prices, while the forty millions is outstanding, is the same, and the contractors pay 6 or 7 per cent for their overdrafts instead of getting the use of the money, free. But if the forty millions is redeemed through taxation, or a Capital Levy, the public pays not only the 5 per cent per annum, together with the contractor’s 6 or 7 per cent, plus a profit on both of them, but it pays the whole of the forty millions out of money which has been received in respect of wages, salaries, and dividends. So far as I am aware, no one has ever suggested that Currency Notes should be retired by taxation. It is true that when this forty millions has been repaid, both the original debt and the repayment cancel each other, and only the interest charges go to the Profit and Loss Account of the Bank. But since, as we have seen, the repayment of bank loans means the immobilisation of an equivalent amount of price-values, this only means that a fresh loan with fresh interest charges has to be created. A consideration of these facts will make it easy to understand the implacable opposition of bankers and financiers to Government paper money and their insistence on the importance of what they term redemption. The payment in current taxation of only one-sixth of the price of war stores, etc., meant, therefore, that a credit grant of the other five-sixths of the price was made to the Public. The repayment of this credit is only justifiable on the assumption that banks own Public Credit.”