Mr. Lloyd George, in the course of his speech, said: “As to the matter of currency, he was completely in agreement with Mr. Chamberlain, who put the position so effectively that he could not usefully add anything. He thought it desirable that there should be considerable reserves of gold in the Bank of England or in the Treasury, and equally desirable that it should be freely used whenever the emergency arose. We were on the road to a much more efficient use of our gold reserve if we used paper currency within safe limits. Our issues of paper currency were well within safe limits. (Hear, hear.) Not only so, but there was no country to be compared with us in this respect. Foreign countries, he thought, had always been nervous about using their gold. The fact that we used it freely showed that was not our view. There was too much disposition even to-day to worship the golden calf. (Laughter.) This country had always gone on the principle that the gold was there to use whenever there was a demand for it, and that practice had never failed us up to the present. It was true that we had never had such a strain put upon it as during the past few months, and it was probable that that strain would increase during the next six or twelve months, when our purchases abroad would be much heavier than ever before, and our sales to other countries considerably less. He did not like to prophesy, and he hated bragging, but he did not mind saying that the resources of gold we had got would carry us through any emergency that we could possibly foresee. (Cheers.) That was his firm conviction, not merely from his observation, but from careful inquiries in the City and elsewhere. He agreed, however, that there was no special merit in paying debts in gold where paper would do equally well, and thought it wasteful, burdensome, and not particularly useful.” PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. Transcriber’s Notes Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced. Ditto marks have been replaced with the actual words.