The Vienna correspondent of the Times believes, upon infor- mation
from Berlin, that the Russian Government has almost succeeded in arranging with some French bankers for a loan of 300,000,000 roubles, or, say, 223,000,000. The Rothschilds refused the proposal, but other firms have taken it up, tempted probably by the high terms offered, or conceivably by recommendations from the French Government. If that story is true, it is, next to the German Army Bill, the most serious evidence yet offered, that immediate action is within the range of Russian calculations. That Government must need money badly, to raise it just now in the midst of a war scare, and with the rouble down so low. Nobody credits the last Budget; but a much smaller loan would have met the actual deficit, which, moreover, the Treasury does not acknow- ledge to exist. Even the military expenditure now being incurred, great as it must be when entire corps cl'arnie are transported across Russia and rehoused in the depth of winter, would hardly explain such a loan. It is possible, however, that the story is an invention, or an exaggeration of a previous one, according to which bankers in Paris and Amsterdam were to supply the Russian Treasury with three millions only.
