hallways. His policy was conservative: "During the summer, white blouses are allowed but they must be absolutely white without coloured pattern or design upon them". He was appointed a director of North Eastern Railway in 1905 and of P. & O. Line in November 1919. He also received foreign decorations, including the Commander of the Légion d'honneur (France), the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun (Japan), and the Order of St. Anna (first class, Russia). Something of his style is conveyed by the following anecdote from Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks:Lord Cunliffe, giving evidence before a Royal Commission, at the special request of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would only say that the Bank of England reserves were "very, very considerable". When pressed to give even an approximate figure, he replied that he would be "very, very reluctant" to add to what he had said. Throughout his tenure, as both a Director and a Governor of the Bank of England, he had a reputation not just for abrasiveness, but as a bully. Cunliffe's manner was so arrogant and abrasive that, whilst Governor of the Bank of England, he had a strained relationship with two of the three Chancellors of the Exchequer with whom he worked (Reginald McKenna and Bonar Law). Cunliffe's arrogance did not only create tensions between the Bank of England and the Treasury, but also created animosity within the Bank of England itself. In the autumn of 1916, his colleagues within the Court of Directors were surreptitiously planning to force him out of the Bank's Governorship, but all the talk did not translate into effective action. The following November, however, the directors were organised effectively enough to ensure the election of Brien Cokayne as Governor and Montagu Norman as Deputy Governor. His dismissal "was a decision that Cunliffe found impossible to accept, mounting a vain campaign over the rest of 1917 to persuade bankers, press and senior figures at the Treasury to try to get Bonar Law to apply pressure on the Court to reverse its vote". This futile last stand achieved nothing beyond Cunliffe's own humiliation. Cunliffe Committee As Governor of the Bank of England, Cunliffe chaired the Cunliffe Committee to recommend on the postwar transition of the British economy. The committee reported in 1918 that "it is imperative that after the war, the conditions necessary for the maintenance of an effective gold standard should be