A psychological disease is not to be diagnosed by the mathematician. We must find a psychological remedy for it, and that remedy is knowledge and common sense. The nation that met the crisis in August last so calmly and has faced since, resolutely and philosophically, the most terrible ordeal of its existence, is not likely to be seized with ungovernable madness because we cannot get an exact mathematical formula in dealing with bank reserves. The knowledge, and the only knowledge that will keep them sane and calm, is that banking is conducted soundly. The confidence of the community is based, and justly based, upon sound banking methods. So long as banks transform into currency the best wealth, then they are soundly managed, irrespective of mathematical gold reserves. The best wealth is to be tested by time--that is, by its durability. The highest wealth is durable; the lowest wealth transient. If we are to have no solid, lasting confidence in sound banking, only in mathematical ratios, and if the highest wealth the banks possess are to stand them in no stead in a panic, then banks can reasonably refuse to liquefy the best wealth. We could not in that case blame them if they speculated. If they maintain the mathematical inexact ratio laid down by critics they will be mathematically safe, for sound wealth in a panic will, the theorists say, be as worthless as unsound wealth. If banks are conducted soundly, if they perform vital services to the nation, if the nation would stagnate without those services, if the nation restricts their freedom of action by the provision of an inadequate supply of legal tender and by the law of legal tender, then it is the duty of the nation to help them in that trouble for which they are not responsible. It is also expedient for the nation to do this. It would be conforming to the law of self-preservation. To do otherwise would be national suicide. Banks cannot do two contrary things at the self-same moment. They cannot keep a high proportion and in the same moment lend freely. If they lend freely the proportion speedily falls, and might speedily fall far below the mathematical formula of safety. If they do not lend freely the mathematicians say they will aggravate the crisis. The only sensible course for the nation to take is to be its own physician. The Government on its behalf can do again what it did last year--provide a supplementary fund of legal tender currency. This was effective more than half a century ago, and it has been effective again. And experience is of greater value than theory.