I+ nflation and Stabilization 
9 
The fact that inflation went on even after the 
termination of the War and generally did not 
reach its peak before 1920, showed that inflation 
was an illness of its own, which had to be cured 
by measures of a monetary character. By 1920, 
people had begun to grasp the necessity of stop- 
ping further inflation. The idea, however, that the 
pre-War value of a currency had still to be re- 
garded in some way as its normal value caused 
people to believe that a stopping of inflation must 
necessarily be connected with a process of de- 
flation calculated to bring the currency back to 
its old value. This was a much more difficult prob- 
lem than people imagined, and in many cases was 
quite outside the sphere of practical possibilities. 
It was, however, to take a very long time before 
a more realistic view came to prevail. The fan- 
tastic ideas about restoration actually prevented 
people from taking serious measures for stopping 
further inflation; and in fact many countries that 
nominally set up restoration as their aim went 
for some years still further along the road of 
inflation. 
The world’s opinion was at the beginning very 
much against those who preached that a stabiliza- 
tion of currencies about their present values must 
be the general program and that an increase in