ABSTRACT
The question whether the world crisis of 1931 was due to the deficiency of the monetary system has been one of heated controversy. Volumes could be, and indeed have been, written about it. Its detailed examination is outside the scope of this book; those interested in the author’s views on that subject are referred to his book on World Finance since 1914. We are concerned here only with the effect of the crisis upon the practical application of monetary reform. Rightly or wrongly, the predominant majority of expert and inexpert opinion concluded—whether under the inescapable logic of facts or merely on the basis of the principle that the proof of the pudding is in the eating—that the monetary system as it operated after the war was inadequate. Some of the critics of the monetary system objected that it was too orthodox, while others objected that it was not nearly orthodox enough. According to the extent of the one conception or the other in a country, so its Government resorted either to reform measures or to an increasingly orthodox policy.
