ABSTRACT
The international economic crisis has thrown the world’s monetary systems into the melting-pot. Until 1931 most people took it for granted that the gold standard had been adopted definitely as the permanent monetary system of the civilised world. Even during the war, when the operation of the gold standard was suspended, it was considered beyond doubt that the suspension would be purely temporary and that once the abnormal situation had come to an end the world would revert to the pre-war system. Developments between 1925 and 1931 apparently justified this assumption. The gold standard was restored. Indeed, its supremacy appeared to be even more safely established than before the war, for the system was adopted by a number of countries which before 1914 were on a silver or inconvertible paper basis.
