During the war the shipping conditions have been such that many countries have been hard put to it, especially if they were contiguous to nations with which the Entente is at present at war, to get the commodities which they needed for their subsistence.  The Entente, with its command of the sea, has found it necessary to ration them so that they should have no available surplus to hand on to the enemy.  They have very naturally endeavoured to resist these measures, and in order to do so have made use of the power that they exercise by their being in possession of commodities which the Entente desires.  They have shown a tendency to say that they would not part with these commodities unless the Entente allowed them to have a larger proportion of things needed for subsistence than the Entente thought necessary for them, and it was as part of this battle for larger imports of necessaries that gold has been to some extent looked upon askance as means of payment, the preference being given to things to eat and wear rather than to the metal.  These wholly abnormal circumstances, however, do not seem to me to be any proof that gold will after the war be any less acceptable as a means of payment than before.  The Germans are usually credited with considerable sagacity in money matters, with rather more, in fact, I am inclined to think, than they actually possess; they, at any rate, show a very eager desire to collect together and hold on to the largest possible store of gold, obviously with a view to making use of it when the war is over in payment for raw materials, and other commodities of which they are likely to find themselves extremely short.  America also has shown a strong tendency to maintain as far as possible within its borders the enormous amount of gold which the early years of the war poured into its hands.  While such is the conduct of the chief foreign nations, it is also interesting to note that one comes across a good many people who, in spite of all the admonitions of the Government to all good citizens to pay their gold into the banks, still hold on to a small store of sovereigns in the fear of some chain of circumstances arising in which only gold would be taken in payment for commodities.  On the whole, I am inclined to think that the power of gold as a desirable commodity merely because it is believed to be always acceptable has not been appreciably shaken by the events of the war.

This does not alter the fact that, as has been shown above, gold, complicated by the paper which has been based upon it, cannot claim to have risen to full perfection as a standard of value.  In primitive times the question of the standard of value hardly arises.  Transactions are for the most part carried out and concluded at once, and any seller who takes a piece of metal in payment for his goods does so with the rough knowledge of what that piece of metal will buy for him at the moment, and that is the only point which concerns him.  The standard of value