On other grounds the loan, well secured as it seems to be, is not of a kind to be encouraged. We have supposed its purpose to be, firstly, to meet a deficit in a Budget, and secondly, to pay for naval expansion. Neither of these objects is going to improve the financial position of the Republic. Covering a deficit by loan is bad finance in any case, but especially so when the loan is raised abroad. In the latter case it is most likely that the borrowing State is outrunning the constable, by importing more goods than it can pay for out of current production. If it imports for the purpose of increasing its productive power by buying such things as railway material, then it is making a perfectly legitimate use of its credit, as long as the money is well spent, and the railways are honestly built, with a prospect of opening up good country, and are not put into the wrong place for political or other reasons. But if this were so, the money would not be wanted to balance a Budget, but on railway capital account. When a balance has to be filled by borrowing it can only mean that the State has spent more than its revenue from taxes permits, and that it is afraid to cut down its expenses by retrenchment or to increase its revenue by taxing more highly. And so it chooses the primrose path of dalliance with a moneylender. As to naval expenditure, here again we have bad finance writ large over the proposal. It is not good business for countries to borrow in order to increase their armies and navies in time of peace, and the practice is especially objectionable when the loan is raised abroad. In time of war, when expenditure has to be so great and so rapid, that the taxpayers could not be expected to have it all taken out of their pockets by the tax-gatherer, there is some excuse for borrowing for naval and military needs; though even in time of war, if we could imagine an ideal State, with every citizen truly patriotic, and properly educated in economics and finance, and with wealth so fairly distributed and taxation so fairly imposed that there would be no possibility of any feeling of grievance and irritation among any class of taxpayers, it would probably decide that the simplest and most honest way of financing war is to do so wholly out of taxation. In time of peace, borrowing for expenditure on defence simply means that the cost of a need of to-day is met by someone who is hired to meet it, by a promise of interest and repayment, the provision of which is passed on to the citizens of to-morrow. It is always urged, of course, that the citizens of to-morrow are as deeply interested in the defence of the realm that they are to inherit as those of to-day, but that argument ignores the obvious fact that to-morrow will bring its own problems of defence with it, which seem likely to be at least as costly as those of the present day. Another objection to lending economically backward countries money to be