Epilogue: The Meaning of Sound Money

It is an honour for me to be asked to give the address at this dinner. Today’s symposium celebrates not one, but two, anniversaries. The first of course is the 50th anniversary of the German Mark. Nothing of course is for ever. But when the Mark bids us goodbye - whether in 1999 or 2002 - it will be in the process of giving birth to the Euro, a successor framed in its image. You will have heard a great deal both about the Mark and the Euro in the course of the day; and I should like to turn to the other event.We are also celebrating the birthday of Professor Stephen Frowen. If any of you are tactless enough to ask which birthday he is celebrating, my reply is that it is quite irrelevant. Numerous poets have declared that we should fight the ‘dying of the light’; and no one has taken this advice more seriously to heart. The British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was also a student of German thought, wrote the famous poem Youth and Age, in which he explained how the fires of youth continued to burn, despite the change in the outward appearance. In the case of Stephen Frowen, even the appearance still shows the zest of a sparkling student.