CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 January 1918, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE VALUE OF THE ROUBLR An extraordinary feature of the disorganisation of Russia is the tremendous depreciation in the value of the rouble. It is this, as much as revolutionary nolions about the value of labor, which has brought about the wonderful rates of pa/ occasionally reported by cable. The chief cause is the flooding of the country with paper money. A former Petrograd correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph said that in August last the note circulation of the Russian Imperial Bank was over 12,000 million doubles, and only 9.3 per cent, of this«was covered by gold. As early as June, M. Shingareoff, then Minister of Finance, admitted that the printing-presses were turning out paper money, at the rate of 30,000,000 roubles every twenty-four hours, and that a single day's interruption of their work would bring Government payments to a standstill. He added that "free prices" were then,impossible, if only for the reason that the presses could not produce nptes enough to pay them with. A few weeks, later lis reported to another meeting that the note presses were working up to the extreme limit of their capacity, and could not possibly increase their output. This, however, seems to have lieen an underestimate, for on August 21 he told a meeting of the Cadet Party that the daily output of notes had risen to 55,000,000 roubles, and that even this did not suffice for the needs of the Government. Professor Chalhousian said on August 31, at a meeting of representatives of trade and industry at Moscow, that of the 27,000,000,000 required by the Budget of the current year only 14,000,000,000 could be supplied by the activity of the printing-presses. Before the war, the same writer continues, the rouble was worth about 2s Id, but its present value (i.e., in November) is not more than a few pence. Roubles are said to have been sold in London at the rate of fifty to the £ 1. A traveller Who recently entered Russia from Persia was surprised to find that his "pounds sterling" were eagerly snapped up at 108 roubles each. In Russia the depreciation shows itself in a stupendous rise of prices and wages. On August 15, M. Kuttler, chairman of the Council of Conferences, the biggest business federation hj Russia, mentioned that the Government had to pay 150 roubles each for shells which it had contracted for at-64 roubles. A few (lays later the Assistant Minister of Trade and Industry, M. Oustrougoff, complained that the railway employees were receiving only nine roubles a d.a.y, whereas workmen occupied for the Ministries of War and Marine were in manv eases receiving more than. 1000 roubles a

month. Tlie monthly wages of no skilled artisan in Petrograd or .Moscow is less Uian 000 roubles, which, at the normal rale of exchange, would he the equivalent of .C 720 a year. Tramway conductors in Moscow receive ii|i to 800 roubles a month; drivers as milch as 700.

NORMAN ANGELL ON PEACE. The necessity for defeating German militarism was emphatically affirmed by Mr N'ornian Angell, author of various pacificist works, in an interview in l\"ew York. "I am not in favor of a 'patched up' peace. I believe that it is absolutely necessary to defeat and thoroughly discredit German militarism, and that until that institution is destroyed the worlS will never be sate. I am also convinced that victory itself will be rendered futile unless we know how to use victory when' peace comes. We are in real (ganger of wasting the great gift which the aoldiers will purchase with their lives of rendering it futile by the bad politics of us civilian; who are left behind. More, I am convinced that our bad politics have already added to the difficulties of the soldiers' task, (f the German peopio are to be brought to see that they are not fighting a war of defence- if tl ie support which they gave their Government is to bo undermined: if Germurip IS to be democratised: if the way is to Jie prepared for territorial concessions necessary for the better Europe, it must be made plain that the allied policy offers to a democratised and law-abiding Ge--rr.any a security greater than thaWhieh .she. can enjoj' under a militarist and autocratic regiment. All this does not mean that.we have not got to defeat Germany ,It means that that defeat cannot be complete until we have added wise political management to the military effort."