The ordinary individual believes that he can use his leisure moments more profitably and more pleasantly than in this occupation. I do not believe that one man in 500,000 could say off-hand approximately what is the proportion of his own bank or the average proportion of all banks. He doesn’t trouble to know, and he doesn’t bother himself about it. He will tell you that he is burdened with quite enough anxieties to trouble himself with this unnecessary anxiety. This is my experience of my fellow-men, and I shall not put greater faith in financiers than in my own experience until they have cross-examined every individual depositor in the country and given me each one’s answer. If, therefore, it be a delusion that confidence resides in individual knowledge of the exact proportion of gold banks hold to their liabilities on deposit and current account, then what is the basis of the national confidence? It is not an individual confidence, but a general confidence. I believe that this confidence is based, and justly based, on the belief that our banks are soundly managed. This belief is a tradition, a habit, a custom. We inherit it as a nation, and the inheritance is handed on from generation to generation. We can, indeed, say that it is in our blood, in our system. Years have rolled on and this confidence has not been abused. There have been times, of course, when the country has found itself face to face with a financial crisis, but it has been saved from disaster by the wisdom of men in high financial stations and by the common-sense of the nation. And this confidence has been further strengthened by the manner in which we have faced the greatest war in which the nation has been involved. I shall analyse the phenomenon further in later chapters, but I will say here that the manner in which the general public received, as a mere matter of course, the creation of the emergency currency notes revealed a psychological trait, or characteristic, of tremendous importance. It is my belief, then--in fact, it is my conviction--that, so far as the general public is concerned, its confidence in banks rests more in the belief of their honest and sound management than in the knowledge of the exact amount of gold they have in their reserves, or where they actually hold their reserves. And I believe, too, that if all were interrogated, forty-four millions and more out of forty-five millions, including some of our shrewd bank managers, would say they believed that that confidence would be strengthened if the public were assured that all the reserves were held at the Bank of England than in the safes of the joint stock banks.