Oh, Those Bank Critics

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 231, 16 September 1935, Page 8

Oh, Those Bank Critics

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —How Jong is the hood of deprecatory fancies about banking and bankers to continue ? 1 know the years of study required to obtain a diploma in banking, yet correspondents continue to repeat libels which even a limited reading of available data would show to be as absurd as they arc untrue.

All that need be said of Mr John Payne is that the years leave my opinion of him unchanged. In 1915, with the same wordy extravagance with which he now assails bankers, he questioned the loyalty of the Puhoi settlers from his bench in Parliament. I then pointed out that the few hundred Bohemians in that settlement had raised over a thousand pounds in their initial effort for the Red Cross, whereas Mr John Payne had moved an amendment to a resolution of the directors of the wealthy Auckland Co-operative Building Society to donate £450 to the Hospital Ship, that the sum be reduced to 2fd 1 Though the amendment of Mr Payne was carried in a sparselyattended meeting, the directors paid over the £450 and left Mr Payne to take what further action he liked, lhe electors of Grey Lynn altered their representative on the first opportunity. Had Mr Payne retracted his reflections on the loyalty of the Puhoites, that episode would not now have been recalled by me. In previous letters 1 have pointed out how the service of British bankers is voluntarily accepted throughout the world because of its soundness and its cheapness. I cited the praise to British bankers for the part they played in aiding the Government to overcome the tremendous difficulties as testified to by Herbert Asquith, Philip Snowden, and Ramsay MacDonald, men who were by no means biassed in'favour of bankers. The opinion of a German general was adduced to the effect that the way the American bankers Morgan and Co. had served the Allies generally, and Great Britain in particular, was equal to another army corps. Evidence was stated from Colonel House’s Private Papers of the dismay of the American Treasury officers at the colossal task they had to face in having to take over the financing of the Allies’ supplies when the United States entered the war. The authorities knew that credit is only advanced on worthwhile securities, Major Douglas and your correspondents to the contrary notwithstanding. As for a Government manufacturing money oy the printing press, apart from earlier experiences in history, the story ot Germany’s pitiable adventure is fully told in the third volume of Lord d’Abernon’s Ambassador of Peace, ft was the British Ambassador who urged the then German Government to appoint a commission of economists, and Dr. Schacht to carry out their recommendations. These and other things have neen told , , May 1 add the testimony ot David Lloyd George? That gentleman was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the outbreak of the war. He had fougnt the financiers and the bankers regarued him almost as regent of His Satanic Majesty. What happened? Did the bankers bring pressure on the lour divisions in the British Cabinet to foiee the Empire into war ? They certainly did hold a meeting, and Lord Cunhffe, the then Governor of the Bank of England, conveyed the view of the bankers to Lloyd George. The banker pleaded that Great Britain should be kept out of the war. ’’We shall all be ruined, was his cry. Margot Asquith records the reaction of the Prime Minister. “Those city men are a lot of ninnies.” If their stand was not heroic, it certainly is clear that such influence they could use was for non-intervention. The way the Rothschilds acted was in keeping with their record. lhe Chancellor sent for Lord Rothschild, and when the meeting took place, Lloyd George opened by saying how they had fought each other. Rothschild at once replied, “Mr Chancellor, that belongs to the past. Tell me what 1 can do to help.” What he was asked to do, he did. When some months later the funeral of Rothschild took place, Lloyd George left his pressing duties to pay his last respects to one whose worth'he had only discovered a few months previously. Nor was that the only association of the Chancellor with members of the Rothschild family. Lord Riddell in his “War Diaries” records that Lloyd George told him a few months after the war began that French finance, both Governmental and banking, were badly handled. Professor Keynes had made a report thereon for the British authorities. Lloyd George wanted the Banks of France and Russia whose gold market was controlled, to support the British banks should it be necessary, as the British gold reserve was then unprotected though British credit was firstclass. The Bank of Russia agreed, but the Bank of France refused. Edward Rothschild, the Parisian banker, Was called in, and his ability and power Jed to an ultimate helpful agreement. These well attested historical facts can be amplified and multiplied. As one whose interest in banking service began through the knowledge of personal tragedies through the losses entailed by the possession of frozen assets tying up the Bank of New Zealand in past years, we cannot be thankful enough that we have been saved the dire distress of millions in the United States, whose safncial savings were wholly’ lost by the failure of thousands of banks since 1929. God help our country if our banking service is ever operated as its critics wrongly say it is.—Yours, etc., H R. FRENCH. Sept, 14, 1935.