The Bank sought to deflect blame for the British slump in response to many critics, including John Maynard Keynes. Through correspondence and testimony before government commissions, its technical advisers provided an intellectual defense of the gold standard. However, as the prevailing monetary arrangements proved increasingly untenable as the interwar years progressed, economists and civil servants were forced to confront the flaws and instabilities endemic to the system. The subsequent 1931 crisis might have dealt a major blow to the authority of the central bank. Yet in its aftermath, experts began to devise new ways of thinking about the organization of the international financial system, as well as the Bank’s centrality within it.