ABSTRACT
I So far as interest in the fundamental problems of monetary theory is evidenced by a steady output of new literature, the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the war show in this country a state of almost complete stagnation. " For nearly twenty years pa'3t ",wrote Mr. Keynes in 19II, in reviewing Professor Irving Fisher's Purchasing Power of Money, "in fact, since the close of the bi-metallic debate, no substantial contribution to this subject has been published in England. . . • This silence on the part of English economists, who have made no use of the advantage over their American colleagues which freedom from political controversy has given them, has greatly hindered the progress of the science, and the strange position has been reached that the theory of money, as it has been ordinarily understood and taught by academic economists in England, is consider-
ablyinadvanceofanypublishedaccountofit.Itis hardlyanexaggerationtosaythatmonetarytheory,in itsmostaccurateform,hasbecomeinEnglandamatter oforaltradition."
