Dr. Sprague's letter of resignation has become by now a very famous document, quoted and everywhere made the text for sermons on delicacy and the higher ethic. Its practical results were very dramatically shown in the dollar market--within fifteen minutes after it had reached the tickers the pound premium had gone from six to thirteen cents. And this added a touch of bitterness to the complaints of those who felt that Dr. Sprague should have spoken of his late employers with more becoming reverence, that in a time when all the future of the administration depended upon popular confidence he should have dealt more gently with that confidence.

I can see little practical substance to this view. Dr. Sprague was drawn from his post in England by the promise of an opportunity to assist in the shaping of a new monetary policy. The news that he had accepted was a powerful stimulant to public confidence in the administration. But Dr. Sprague soon found that he did not possess a really commanding place in Washington, and saw in progress a money policy with which he was "in fundamental disagreement." There was no alternative to resignation. But resigning from a national administration is not like resigning from a Shakespeare Memorial Society, an example by which most of the talk of ethics has evidently been coloured. There is a formidable body of informed opposition to Professor Warren and his money philosophy; no one is more fitted to lead that opposition than Dr. Sprague. Our hope lies in the efficiency with which Dr. Sprague and his followers can force their way to dominance at Washington, and with a money bug Congress in the offing, that movement cannot be too quickly begun. Until the Tuesday statement of the Federal Reserve banks shows that credit is leaving the stagnant stage, the bankers will be an obstacle to industrial recovery. And they will not leave that stagnation, and pledge themselves and their depositors to the lending of money until they have solid assurance that the administration intends to give them a debt dollar worth as much as a real one.