The Daily News. SATURDAY JANUARY 30, 1915. WAR AND FINANCE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 198, 30 January 1915, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY JANUARY 30, 1915. WAR AND FINANCE

When the British Chancellor of the Exchequer early in December hist gave his picturesque account of the way in which the Treasury had arerted the panic which threatened British credit at the outbreak of the war, lie gave some figures that to 'ordinary persons may seem marvellous. Ho stated that bills of Exchange representing between I 350 and 501) millions sterling, all bearing British signatures, were in danger, on account of the stoppage of the payment by foreign countries of their debts ' to England. There were held in London four thousand millions of foreign securities win'!.;' the Home assets were worth another thirteen thousand millions. The whole amount of bills discounted under the Government's guarantees was £120,000,000, and by the end of the war, there might remain £50,000,000 in what might be called cold storage— put on one side. If we turn to the cost of the war, the figures quoted above shrink to comparative insignificance. In a recent number oi the Nineteenth Century, Jlr Yves Cuyot makes a series of estimates aa to the cost of the war. He estimates that there are 18,500,000 men in arms, and allows ten shillings per day per man, which works out at more thai £!),000,000 sterling a day, £270,000,0(X a month and for six months, £1,620, 000.000. Tlie losses caused by reduced production are calculated at £830,000,<K)O for Germany, £600,000,000 for France, £110,000,000 for Russia, £IOO,000,000 for Britain and £58,000,000 for Belgium. In addition, there is to be accounted for a probable loss of about tw 0 million men, the economic value of whom varies trom £404 in the case of a Hungarian, and £B2B for a Briton. Tf these various losses are added up, it will be seen that the calculation for a six months war assumes the huge total of £4,205,000,000. This seems to be a terrible price to pay for Germany's attempt to ride rough-shod over the nations of the earth.