1. _To leave the gold value of a country’s currency at the low level to which war has driven it is an injustice to the_ rentier _class and to others whose income is fixed in terms of currency, and practically a breach of contract; whilst to restore its value would meet a debt of honour._ The injury done to pre-war holders of fixed interest-bearing stocks is beyond dispute. Real justice, indeed, might require the restoration of the purchasing power, and not merely the gold value, of their money incomes, a measure which no one in fact proposes; whilst nominal justice has not been infringed, since these investments were not in gold bullion but in the legal tender of the realm. Nevertheless, if this class of investors could be dealt with separately, considerations of equity and the expedience of satisfying reasonable expectation would furnish a strong case. But this is not the actual situation. The vast issues of War Loans have swamped the pre-war holdings of fixed interest-bearing stocks, and society has largely adjusted itself to the new situation. To restore the value of pre-war holdings by Deflation means enhancing at the same time the value of war and post-war holdings, and thereby raising the total claims of the _rentier_ class not only beyond what they are entitled to, but to an intolerable proportion of the total income of the community. Indeed justice, rightly weighed, comes down on the other side. Much the greater proportion of the money contracts still outstanding were entered into when money was worth more nearly what it is worth now than what it was worth in 1913. Thus, in order to do justice to a minority of creditors, a great injustice would be done to a great majority of debtors. This aspect of the matter has been admirably argued by Professor Irving Fisher.[42] We forget, he says, that not all contracts require the same adjustment in order to secure justice, and that while we are debating whether we ought to deflate to secure ideal justice for those who made contracts on old price levels, new contracts are constantly being made at the new price levels. An estimate of the volume of contracts now outstanding, classified according to their age, would show that some contracts are a day old, some are a month old, some are a year old, some are a decade old, and some are a century old, the great mass, however, being of very recent origin. Consequently the average, or centre of gravity, of the total existing indebtedness is probably always somewhat near the present. Before the war, Professor Fisher estimated, very roughly, that contracts in the United States were on the average about one year old. [42] In his article “Devaluation versus Deflation,” published in the eleventh _Manchester Guardian_ Reconstruction Supplement (Dec. 7, 1922).