The Berlin correspondent of the Times has an interesting despatch
in Tuesday's issue on British and German financial policy. German comment on Mr. Asquith's Budget proposals is apparently of a mixed character. The critics admire the courage and the strategy of Mr. Asquith's old-age pension scheme, but from their experience of Imperial pension and insurance funds they recognise that the voluntary assump- tion of these elastic obligations will inevitably arrest the reduction of the National Debt and restrict the expenditure of the great spending Departments. As regards German Imperial finance generally, the correspondent points out that Mr. Asquith's complacent comparisons need to be discounted in the light of the measures for increasing the revenue as yet held in reserve by the German Imperial Govern- ment,—e.g., the extending of the scope of the Death-duties and the conversion of the various " State " railways into a single Imperial railway system. The official returns of German trade for 1907 show an increase of over £55,000,000 since 1905, and of nearly £25,000,000 since 1906; while from 1905 to 1907 the Value of German exports to the States with which Germany concluded Commercial Treaties on the basis of the new Customs Tariff has increased by 28 per cent., as against 14 per cent. for those to the most-favoured-nation. States, including Great Britain.
