ITALY'S FINANCIAL POSITION

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 33, 8 February 1913, Page 13

ITALY'S FINANCIAL POSITION

♦ A SATISFACTORY STATE OF AFFAIRS. . • The financial authorities of Italy assure us that the country has emerged from the Turkish war in a very satisfactory condition. That, of course, is very nice (says an American writer), although we may be permitted to wonder what constitutes a satisfactory condition from the standpoint of the national financier. Apparently nothing more than a surplus is seeded to this end. The misery of the people from whom the surplus is squeezed does not matter at all. Now the war is said to have cost £30,000,000, although it must actually have cost vastly more than this. The sum is a very large one for the povertystricken people of Italy, who must now face the paralysis of trade and the stagnation of industry. The development of Tripoli and its protection from the Arabs will be costly, and among other incidentals is an increased annual estimate of £17,000,000 for the navy. If there is anything satisfactory in such a state of affairs it is visible only to the financier who has the happy gift of confusing a treasury surplus with national l.Tosperity. To the unfmancial mind it would seem that prosperity is to be measured not by what people have paid, but by what they still have, and measured by such a gauge as this, there seems to be small ground for congratula* tion in the financial condition of Italy.