CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 291, 1 May 1913, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

.FKENZIED FINANCE.' The final authorities of Europe and America are shaking their heads very gravely over the new German taxes and the war levy of £50,000,000 (comments the Lyttelton Times). JMost people are aware in-a dim way that Germany has been spending enormous sums of borrowed money on armaments, but the actual figures are a good deal more startling than is generally supposed. In 1900 the public, debt of Germany was £105,000,000; to-day it amounts to more than £270,000,000, "and this addition of over £165,000,000 represents largely expenditure on the army and navy. The annual deficits have been met by means of borrowed money in a time of peace and exceptional prosperity. This year the German Government wants nearly £30,000,000 to square.its accounts and meet some loans which are falling due, and it proposed early in the year to issue funded stock to the amount of £17,500,000. On the advice of the Berlin bankers—who do not see eye to eye,with Mr. James Allen —the Treasury changed the plan and raised £20,000,000 on Treasury bills for short terms, only*4 £7,500,000 worth of stock being placed on tlie market. This is the financial position which ■ the Kaiser and his advisers have complicated- by demanding new taxation to the amount of about £10,000,000 annually for military purposes and a "war levy" of £50,000,000 on property for immediate expenditure. The new proposals have had a very depressing effect upon the German markets already, and the real trouble, the experts predict, will begin when the collection of the levy is undertaken. The withdrawal of £50,000,000 from the working capital of a heavily mortgaged country would be a, serious matter at any time, and in Germany's case the loss to the nation may be doubled or trebled, since many individuals and businesses will have to realise assets at an unfavorable moment in order to find the required amount of ready money. Tt is no wonder that tlie nations are looking askance at Germany while she adds to her enormous armaments under these conditions. The Powers are asking themselves if responsible statesmen would follow such a policy except in the belief that war was actually in sight.

WAR LOSSES. The publication of estimates of the war losses of the Balkan Allies draws attention again to one of the racial aspects of war, which tends to remove the healthiest and most virile members of a community. In the Napoleonic wars, the stoutest manhood of France was destroyed. "In one year," writes Paine, "1,300,000 men were called up, and most of them perished in the campaign of ISI4. Between 1804 and 1815, Napoleon sent to their death more than 1.700,000 Frenchmen born within the limits of olden France, to whom must he added probably 2.000,000 of mfcn born'outside those limits and killed by him under the name of allies or enemies." From first to last, it has been estimated, this modern Minotaur devoured five million human being 9. It .has been stated authoritatively that the Napoleonic wars appreciably reduced the average stature of the men of France.

THE WASTE OF ABMAMEXTS.

In the twenty years, following the "Navy scare" of ISS4, Great Britain spent £450,000,000 in the ellort to maintain a fleet stronger than any two possible rivals. Tn 1905 the Admiralty, in its scheme of concentration, admitted that most of this expenditure was then

represented by scrap-iron, 115 vessels.of the classes of "unprotected" and "protected" cruisers being condemned as useless for all save police purposes. In October, 1905, a new and more costly rate of ■ competition began with the laying down of the first Dreadnought, and since then another (leet has become obsolete. The modern British Navy has never fought a battle, but it has cost more in money than the whole of the British campaigns of the last century. If the nation is fortunate, that fleet, too, will never be used.