To show that my friend, the exchange dealer, made a decent profit out of this retail transaction, I quote some of his selling rates for the day on which he based his charges: _Rates of Exchange_ _June 29, 1921_ Austrian paper crowns 2400-2600 for £1 Finnish marks 220-240 for £1 German marks 265-275 for £1 Polish marks 6000 (selling rate) for £1 Greek drachmas 62-65 for £1 Italian lire 76-77 for £1 Roumanian lei 230-250 for £1 The last I heard from Vienna was that they had been varying from ten thousand to fifteen thousand to the paper pound! The difference in the rates depended, of course, upon whether the customer was buying or selling the foreign money. If he was buying Austrian notes, he would get twenty-four hundred paper crowns for a pound. If he was selling them, he would receive a pound in exchange for twenty-six hundred paper crowns. All these paper notes are called after, and profess to represent, silver coins, which were themselves before the war, tokens, and passed current at more than their intrinsic value because of their relation to gold. Thus the pre-war parity of marks was about twenty to the gold pound; of Austrian crowns, about twenty-four; of francs, lire, etc., about twenty-five. On the day of my purchase, therefore, the exchange value of the German mark was less than one thirteenth, of the Austrian crown less than one one hundredth, and of the Polish mark, one two hundredth, of its pre-war status. But this underestimates the depreciation; for the British pound is no longer a gold sovereign, and even gold has been depreciated.[17] The paper pound in June, 1921, was, I think, about the equivalent of twelve pre-war shillings in purchasing power. The gold dollar, which would only buy a little more than four shillings before the war, would buy five at the beginning of December, 1921. [17] To-day, November 30, 1921, the paper pound is worth about four fifths of a gold pound. The purchasing power of gold--say, the gold dollar--is perhaps about two thirds of what it was before the war.