The Russian Finance Minister has issued his Budget for 1905,
but it is not easily intelligible. He states that the total receipts for 1904 amounted to £197,752,000, while the regular expenditure was some ten millions lower; but he admits that he has not calculated the special war expenses in this account, and those expenses which are naturally paid for by loans, Treasury bills, and an issue probably of paper roubles. He comforts himself with the reflection, however, that the Treasury possessed on December 21st, 1904, £123,000,000 in gold. We are not inclined ourselves to believe in Russian bankruptcy, and always remember the rapidity with which the Treasury recovered itself after the Crimean War; but in the absence of a Parliament, with corruption every- where, and with the power of issuing inconvertible paper money without, debate, Russian accounts cannot be, and are
not, trustworthy. The pessimist statements that "the Govern- ment cannot go on for six months" are as unreliable as the official figures; but it stands to reason that Russia, though vast, is a poor country, that the war must cost immense sums, and that there must come a time, if peace is not reached, when the price to be paid for war loans will be unendurably heavy.
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