Those versed in its meaning were able to discount its importance. Now, however, that recent experiences have greatly enlightened the public, it would be well to take this lesson to heart. The object of raising the rate was, presumably, to protect the Bank’s reserve, and to draw gold from abroad. No rate, however, will protect the reserve in the day of world-wide panic, and no rate will bring gold here in such a world-war. Scarcely was it raised than it had to be brought down again. If it had to be legally raised to 10 per cent. before emergency currency could be issued, the sooner this piece of red tape is destroyed the better. However, it is hardly likely that a crisis of the dimensions we have experienced will recur. Should it recur some generations hence, the Government in those days will have experience and precedent to guide them. Though the greater part of the wealth of the banks was frozen in these early days, owing to the circumstances I have mentioned, and they had only their cash wealth to carry them through, there was no panic. The stability of the banking structure was not assailed by a tempest, and its position never seemed in real peril. A zephyr might have blown about it, but not a hurricane. Its foundations never swerved visibly. Let us recall, too, that the crisis occurred at an unfortunate time in the days when there are heavy calls upon the banks for holiday cash. If they paid depositors largely in notes, they fulfilled their legal obligations, and their action in this respect must be judged in the light of the legal restrictions on which I have laid emphasis in former chapters. If depositors had to go to the Bank of England to exchange their notes for gold, this was no proof of a panicky run on the Bank of England. Moreover, there can be little doubt that in all their elaborate scheming prior to the war, the Germans prepared to start a panic by a fictitious run on the Bank. But this plan failed as egregiously as their plans to bring about revolution in India and the colonies. So far as the depositors were concerned the banks had little need to claim the protection of the moratorium. The system soon began to work as smoothly and as perfectly as in normal times.