IT'S NOT MO,NEY SHORTAGE BUT IDEALS SHORTAGE

That Worries Lord Sempill
From a Staff Reporter
" Money can be just as easily spent into existence by the Government as lent into existence
by the banks " was a neat remark (worthy to be remembered) made by Lord Sempill, in conversation with me last week.
Lord Sempill is a vice-president of the Economic Reform Club, most of whose leading personalities are names familiar to readers of this newspaper (Mr. Loftus, M.P., Mr. R. R. Stokes, M.P., Lord Lymington, the Duke of Bedford).
The clubs aim is monetary reform in a spirit that is very close to the Catholic social spirit.
" The Pope's Peace Point dealing with economic security is in fact one in spirit with points five and six of the Atlantic Charter, and both can be put into effect at home by reforms in the banking system," said Lord, Sempill.
NO NEW ORDER WITHOUT — MONETARY REFORM " Since last November I have made two speeches in the Upper House on the subject of money. I tried to make one thing quite clear, namely, that there could he no hope of a new order if our attitude to money were not radically revised, " The measures by which this revision can be Made are simple, logical and quite unrevolutionary so far as the ordinary appearance of daily life is concerned. But they involve sacrifice— sacrifice of preconceived ideas not the least. Facts are stubborn things to deal with and they force us to jettison now those out-of-date ideas.
" We used to think gold gave value to money. That has now to go overboard as an outworn notion. Paper money costs nothing to create. I suggest it should be created by. the State. It would bridge that yawning gulf between the ever-growing flood of plenty and the increasing number of human beings reduced to the poverty line. Every living authority on banking agrees that banks create money. Why is the next logical step so universally blinked —namely, that money can be more justly created by the State?"
SHORTAGE OF IDEALS But Lord Sempill was even more insistent on another point.
" This .country suffers a serious shortage of inspiring ideals. We are looking for a new order. So are the Nazis—in fact they have drawn one U p and imposed it already on half of the world. But compare their idealism with ours. They are like a raging fire—we are a flicker, and a half-hearted flicker at that. They feel they have something which they want to foist wilty-nilly on a world that needs it. We know better and realise how dreadfully wrong their entire system is. But is our dull semiintellectualism and inertia a good enough substitute? It is not. And lint,' We as a nation deride ha turn in deadly earnest to the high ideals that can make life everywhere something better than a burden, all reforming and planning contrived by the sharpest minds WIN be of no Lord Sempill has little time for the pontifical tebuilders of the universe, attached to ideas, detached from truly human values. For him fine words butter no parsnips.
" Someone," he went on, " whose name is renowned, said to me recently inprivate: 'God is not at all pleased with this country.' I agreed and added, Why should He be?'
" I say now we shall !Wier make Him pleased, we shall never get out of the present muddle unless the old values are restored. It's not really a new order we seek. Rather it's the old eternal order of Christianity. And some of the greatest men of the day who lead us believe the same if their words mean anything: Sumner Wells, Smuts, Henry Wallace. Roosevelt and Churchill."