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Press, Volume LVI, Issue 16854, 7 June 1920, Page 6

Ilie current '"Gazette" contains particulars of the railway revenue and expenditure for the month of May, and a compai-ison is made with the" first-twenty-six days of the financial year 1919-20. The revenue was £g40 3 410, an increase of about £93,000, and the expenditure £361,393, an increase of about £127.090. As between the islands, thej;e is nothing to choose in. the increase of revenue or expenditure. A point which is worth emphasising— we have referred to it on previous occasions—is that the passenger traffic is the backbone of the Northern revenue, and tie goods traffic the backbone of tho

i! revenue in this island. The following I arc typical figures—they refer to the ! ' two sots of ''main lines and branches": — North. South. , £ £ Passenger revenue ... 135,395 73,966 Total revenue ... 291,546 203.351 This means that tho passenger traffic 1 i yielded 4 r > per cent, of the revenue in tho North, and 35 per cent, in the ■ South. Goods, etc., yielded 54 per cent, in tho North and 65 per cent, in tho South. It is the Northern fondness for running about that swells the Northern returns, .i fact to bo borne in mind v, hen bare totals are quoted. The returns show that there is more solid business per head of population in this island than in the North. Mr Lloyd George's references to MKrassin, the Russian Government's envoy to Britain. indicate that the suggestion has been made that is a German. There appears to be ii° foundation for the suggestion, for Krassin is a pure Russian, and was born, in Siberia in 1870. When quite a young man, studying engineering in Petrograd, he joined the revolutionaries, and under the cid regime, suffered arrest and exile. After the revolution of ISOS he j had to leave Russia, and lie became an assistant engineer and electrician in the I firm of Siemens and Halsko, in Berlin, i In 1912 he was permitted to return to ; Jlussia, and he became manager of the I Siemens branch in Petrograd. Apparently he then gave up politics until after the Soviet rcvolutioji. & In the course of the interview to which we have referred in one of our leading articles, ho was asked what he had to say about the suggestion that he was pro-German. He explained that lie was not, in the sense in which that term is commonly understood, and lie J proceeded to make some observations which will have been of interest to British manufacturers. He is an engineer, he said, and "an engineer is in the main accustomed to judge things exclusively from a practical point of view. There had always been a difference between German and other firms. Tho Germans always tried to suit the market ; others, English, for example, tried to force the Russians to buy whatever thev found it convenient to sell. Again, "English machines were very good, but very heavy, and, consequently, expensive, because the old Russian tax was by weight. The Germans, to meet this tax made lighter machines, or made the delicate, lighter parts of machines in Germany, and the heavier parts in Russia, thereby avoiding the tax. Further, the Germans knew Russia, better, and conducted their correspondence in Russian, while the English insisted in writing in their own language, whother the customer understood it or not. Finally, tho Germans used to allow long credits." One cannot wonder that the Germans were more successful than the British in tho economic penetration of Russia.