The Oamaru Mail. TUESDAY, 0CT0BER 29, 1912

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11774, 29 October 1912, Page 3

The Oamaru Mail. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1912

The war in the Balkans has played a trick on the finance of Finance. the Western world and that other world which depends on it for the sinews of its wars with the wilderness and! with the development of its conditions and resources. The latest from faris is a revelation in two ways. (1) It shows that the time has actually come to tap the rich Continental resources for the financial needs of the self-governing dominions, and (2) that the Eastern war interposed an unexpected bar at the last moment. On the whole, we are inclined to the opinion that the outcome is favorable to the hopes of the dominions, for had there been no trouble of war —the one trouble that absolutely demoralises money markets everywhere—the Sydney Government might very probably have got its three millions from the French people. It is, by the way, one of the consequences of agricultural prosperity in France that there is so much money to lend to the world besides carrying on all the great projects of works which so abound in their own country. One message tells us that as the result the New South Wales Government is getting a million and a-half at 4 per cent, for ten years at £99. But another message tells us that the Government is issuing two and a-half millions of bonds at 4 per cent, for a currency of five years at £9l. If this be true, then it measures for us the anxiety caused by the war, for intrinsically there is no such difference between the holding power of five,and of ten years. One cannot help wondering whv if a million and a-half are available at £99 the Government should deliberately issue bonds at £9l, even with a currency of five years. Whatever may turn out to be the case, the fact is patent that the New South Wales Government has rather made a mess of its financial affairs. Theje was no war when our last loan was issued, it is true. But allowing for that circumstance, it is almost inconceivable that'our appeal was not far more successful than this appeal of- the Australian Government. If the opponents of the men who engineered our success, W striking by the side of the Australian failure, jeered blatantly for months what would they have said if our success had been a failure of the same calibre ?