ABSTRACT
The story of King Midas and the Golden Touch is familiar to all who were brought up on Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales. This worthy king, being abnormally fond of gold, was granted by a god the privilege that everything he touched turned to gold. The Germans could not pay the interest in gold, and the Allied nations did not wish them to pay in goods. So it became necessary to lend them the money to pay the interest. Superstitions about gold are curiously deep-seated, not only in those who profit by them, but even in those to whom they bring misfortune. In the autumn of 1931, when the French forced the English to abandon the gold standard, they imagined that they were doing the English an injury, and the English, for the most part, agreed with them. The advantage of gold, in theory, is that it affords a safeguard against the dishonesty of Governments.
