The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 1935. MONETARY LEGERDEMAIN.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20561, 12 March 1935, Page 6

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 1935. MONETARY LEGERDEMAIN.

/V MERICAXS have long been known as the most gullible people in the world, for no other nation could have “ got away ” with the wooden nutmeg, or the hundred and one “ notions ” and “ gadgets ” that make more or less respectable mountebanks of half the population. And these gullible people, who in 1931, incredible as it may seem, paid in pensions in respect to the Civil War alone the sum of 69,814,723 dollars and 13 cents, apart from the gigantic sums paid in respect to Spanish War and World War pensions, have a way of deceiving themselves on a grand scale. The 675 million dollars that remain over from the 2812 million dollars’ profit on the devaluation of the dollar have been applied to a reduction of the National Debt. This sounds like good finance, but unfortunately for the country’s credit, the people who lately sued the Government for breach of contract in giving them devalued dollars for gold dollar bonds were assured by the court that they had no case, or, in other words, that there was no profit, for that was the effect of the judgment. The majority argument of the court was that Federal bondholders had suffered no damage and had no right “at present ” to other than dollar for dollar redemption; that the claimant, when he received 10,000 dollars for a Liberty bond in 1934 received dollars of superior purchasing power to those invested in in 1917, and that payment in actual gold dollars would be of no value to the claimant because the Government regulations prevented their transfer abroad. This is mere monetary legerdemain, and it has an inherent danger in that in the event of future revaluation or international stabilisation on a gold basis, the bondholders would be able to reinstate suits of damages for abrogation of contract. CAT AND MOUSE VIGILANCE. nTHERE ARE POSSIBILITIES in the new regulation under which men on sustenance payments must report three times a week to the unemployment bip-eau. This must call for three times as many scrutineers as there have been hitherto, and an extension of the system of reporting every day would be an agreeable way of taking in one another’s washing, provided the men on sustenance could have a turn periodically as scrutineers. Frankly, the new system is an absurdity, for it seems to be based on the assumption that men are dishonest, and it has the other grave objection that the more frequently a man has to report himself the more likely he is to lapse into mental pauperdom, without either the urge or the opportunity to seek casual work for himself. THE ISLES OF GREECE. REECE, metaphorically speaking, is a kind of slippery pole for monarchs or even dictators. A hundred years after Byron’s death, his lines could still be put into the mouth of any Greek patriot:— The mountains look on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free. Byron, in 1824, welded the Greek revolutionaries into a solid body, but disaffection prevented him from leading* them in battle. In that year, too, he was invited to become “ Governor-General of the enfranchised parts of Greece,” but his death put an end to what would certainly have been a political anticlimax of the first water. Now we are told that keen monarchists in Greece are mentioning the names of the Duke and Duchess of Kent as possible king and queen. There is not the remotest hope that Britain will even coquette with the idea, for the certain fact of a member of the British Royal House becoming a fugitive, as he would become sooner or later, would be a blow to British prestige that could not be contemplated for a moment, apart from the political suspicions that British penetration in the Balkans might create.