Protests against war inflation were not confined to British specialists in finance. What is inflation? As used by the more careful writers on the subject today, it is taken to signify the increase of bank credits not represented by any immediate addition to current wealth. For example, if the Government borrows by an issue of bonds, such bonds taken by the banks, and payment for them made in the form of bank credit which is at once transferred to individuals who have furnished labor or supplies, it is evident that there has been a net addition to the purchasing power of the community not represented by any corresponding addition to wealth whether of a saleable or available form. Mr. Delano, a member of the Federal Reserve Board, said that the war had produced a world inflation the like of which had never occurred before--"The usual symptoms of such methods of inflation are the disappearance of metallic money and the general advance in the prices of commodities." He gives the following illustration of what has taken place in this process of inflation: "Prior to our entry into the war, when the European nations were buying heavily in the United States, they paid largely in gold for what they bought, and as a result about a billion dollars in gold coin came to this country in the period of two and one-half years. The reason the European nations were able to send us their gold was that they printed paper money for their own use, releasing gold for us. But that gold inflation in this country is one explanation of the general advance in prices of all commodities, although undoubtedly it is not the only explanation; for it must be freely admitted that prices have been affected, first, by scarcity, occasioned by increased demand from Europe for many articles produced by us; second, by reason of the fact that increases in taxes and wages of labor have entered into the cost of production and sale of all articles and account for a share of the increased prices of commodities." CIVIL WAR INFLATION. The United States had large experience with inflation during the Civil War. Some $500,000,000 were in this way added to the cost of the war which might have been avoided. A plain statement of the real incidents of inflation is given by Mr. A. C. Miller of the Federal Reserve Board in his _Financial Mobilization for War_, in the following passage: