ABSTRACT
During the war, all the exchanges remained in a state of suspended animation by reason of the control exercised in the belligerent countries over payments abroad. In 1919 the exchanges were generally decontrolled, and the course followed since the artificial equilibrium of the war-years ended has registered the effects of the war and the resulting terms of peace on the economic health of the countries concerned. Whether the policy pursued by the peoples victorious in the Great War was, on purely political grounds, a desirable one is not in question. The subject of foreign exchange must deal largely with international economics, and students of it are compelled to furnish explanations of the phenomena they find. If a depreciating exchange were of lasting benefit to the export trade, every nation should obviously set about depreciating our own currencies as fast as possible.
