THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1908. GERMANY'S FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3046, 17 November 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1908. GERMANY'S FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES.

As want of money is the chronic state of most Governments, sympathetic consideration will be given to the plight of the German Government, whiclj is spending money faster than it can make it. Twice within recent years has the Reichstag nibbled at the task of putting the Imperial finances straight. The Government has determined that this time it shall be done thoroughly. The amount of the Imperial debt, £212,500,000, does not seem excessive when compared with our own, or that of other Great Powers, nor is the explanation of the German Government's anxiety to be sgught in adding the debts of the individual States to the Imperial debt. It is not the gross amount that causes anxiety, but the circumstances under which it has come into existence and the rate at which it is growing. In 1877 the Imperial debt was less than £1,000,000, and in the last

eight years the total increase was ?Imost as large as in the previous twenty-three years. Huge deficits are chronic; current expenditure is met out of loans; there is no provision for debt extinction; and the Government has to raise money at 4 per cent. This has happened during a period of profound peace and striking economic expansion. The Reichstag bas'voted expenditure without voting the funds to meet it, and the interesting question is why it has not done so. One may negative straightway the idea that taxation in Germany is already so high or the wealth of the country so modest that the limit of revenue has been reached. It is doubtful whether the German, having regard to income, is as heavily taxed as the Englishman; it is still more doubtful whether taxation has kept pace with the national income. Tha wealth of Germany has multiplied many times during the last thirty years, and if the Reichstag has not balanced its Budgets, it is certainly not because the country is too poor to afford it. The expenditure on armaments, in particular on the navy, has most contributed to confound the Budget, and the country is committed by the Navy Acts to expenditure a term of years. Nevetheless, forces undoubtedly exist to check the further expansion of the Navy Estimates. Significant protests by men so little susceptible of anti-militarism as Coolnel Gadke have'appeared, while only a fwe days ago the "Kreuz Zeitung," the organ of the Prussian squires, pressed for a halt in naval expansion. The problem of the Imperial Government is to devise a formula which shall satisfy* the States and the squires by not encroaching upon direct taxation, and satisfy the Liberal members of the Reichstag by not further adding to the inequitable burden resting upon the poor. The "North German Gazette," the semiofficial organ, tells the consumer that he is to make the chief sacrifice, and doubtless the duties on tobacco and alcohol will he increased. A proposal which is not likely to meet with popular opposition is one to tax advertisements, but the newspapers have already begun to campaign against it. Still more severe will be the assault on a proposed impost on electricity and gas. The Government 's idea is to tax these when used for private consumption, not for power. The Government will have a bard task.to persuade the Reichstag to accept its plans.