convenience. But the council would have no rash nor harsh

innovations, no strange names for the months, and no alteration

in the numbering of the years.

The world had already been put upon one universal monetary basis.

For some months after the accession of the council, the world's

affairs had been carried on without any sound currency at all.

Over great regions money was still in use, but with the most

extravagant variations in price and the most disconcerting

fluctuations of public confidence. The ancient rarity of gold

upon which the entire systemrested was gone. Gold was now a

waste product in the release of atomic energy, and it was plain

that no metal could be the basis of the monetary system again.

Henceforth all coins must be token coins. Yet the whole world

was accustomed to metallic money, and a vast proportion of

existing human relationships hadgrown up upon a cash basis, and

were almost inconceivable without that convenient liquidating

factor. It seemed absolutely necessary to the life of the social

organisation to have some sort of currency, and the council had

therefore to discover somereal value upon which torest it.

Various such apparently stable values as land and hours of work

were considered. Ultimately the government, which was now in

possession of most of the supplies of energy-releasing material,

fixed a certain number of units of energy as the value of a gold

sovereign, declared a sovereign to be worth exactly twenty marks,

twenty-five francs, five dollars, and so forth, with the other

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