banks (we cannot go further than this at present) may be properly kept on deposit in the international money market. This is not the expedient of second–rate or impoverished countries; it is the expedient of all those who have not attained a high degree of financial supremacy—of all those, in fact, who are not themselves international bankers. 11. In the forty years, therefore, during which the world has been coming on to a gold standard (without, however, giving up for that reason its local currencies of notes or token silver), two devices—apart from the bullion reserve itself and the bank rate—have been evolved for protecting the local currencies. The first is to permit a small variation in the ratio of exchange between the local currency and gold, amounting perhaps to an occasional premium of ¾ per cent on the latter; this may help to tide over a stringency which is seasonal or of short duration without raising to a dangerous level the rate of discount on purely local transactions. The second is for the Government or Central Bank to hold resources available abroad, which can be used for maintaining the gold parity of the local currency, when there is the need for it. 12. We are now more nearly in a position to come back to the currency of India herself, and to see it in its proper relation to those of other countries. At one end of the scale we have Great Britain and France—creditor nations in the short–loan market.[12] In an intermediate position comes Germany—a creditor in relation to many of her neighbours, but apt to be a debtor in relation to France, Great Britain, and the United States. Next come such countries as Russia and Austria–Hungary—rich and powerful, with immense reserves of gold, but debtor nations, dependent in the short–loan market on their neighbours. From the currencies of these it is an easy step to those of the great trading nations of Asia—India, Japan, and the Dutch East Indies.