I doubt if English people fully realise either the economic sturdiness or the political courage of their Italian ally.Italy is not merely fighting a first-class war in first-class fashion but she is doing a big, dangerous, generous and far-sighted thing in fighting at all.France and England were obliged to fight;the necessity was as plain as daylight.The participation of Italy demanded a remoter wisdom.In the long run she would have been swallowed up economically and politically by Germany if she had not fought; but that was not a thing staring her plainly in the face as the danger, insult and challenge stared France and England in the face.What did stare her in the face was not merely a considerable military and political risk, but the rupture of very close financial and commercial ties.I found thoughtful men talking everywhere I have been in Italy of two things, of the Jugo-Slav riddle and of the question of post war finance.So far as the former matter goes, I think the Italians are set upon the righteous solution of all such riddles, they are possessed by an intelligent generosity.They are clearly set upon deserving Jugo-Slav friendship; they understand the plain necessity of open and friendly routes towards Roumania.It was an Italian who set out to explain to me that Fiume must be at least a free port; it would be wrong and foolish to cut the trade of Hungary off from the Mediterranean.But the banking puzzle is a more intricate and puzzling matter altogether than the possibility of trouble between Italian and Jugo-Slav.
I write of these things with the simplicity of an angel, but without an angelic detachment.Here are questions into which one does not so much rush as get reluctantly pushed.Currency and banking are dry distasteful questions, but it is clear that they are too much in the hands of mystery-mongers; it is as much the duty of anyone who talks and writes of affairs, it is as much the duty of every sane adult, to bring his possibly poor and unsuitable wits to bear upon these things, as it is for him to vote or enlist or pay his taxes.Behind the simple ostensible spectacle of Italy recovering the unredeemed Italy of the Trentino and East Venetia, goes on another drama.Has Italy been sinking into something rather hard to define called "economic slavery"? Is she or is she not escaping from that magical servitude? Before this question has been under discussion for a minute comes a name--for a time I was really quite unable to decide whether it is the name of the villain in the piece or of the maligned heroine, or a secret society or a gold mine, or a pestilence or a delusion--the name of the /Banca Commerciale Italiana./Banking in a country undergoing so rapid and vigorous an economic development as Italy is very different from the banking we simple English know of at home.Banking in England, like land-owning, has hitherto been a sort of hold up.There were always borrowers, there were always tenants, and all that had to be done was to refuse, obstruct, delay and worry the helpless borrower or would-be tenant until the maximum of security and profit was obtained.I have never borrowed but I have built, and I know something of the extreme hauteur of property of England towards a man who wants to do anything with land, and with money I gather the case is just the same.But in Italy, which already possessed a sunny prosperity of its own upon mediaeval lines, the banker has had to be suggestive and persuasive, sympathetic and helpful.These are unaccustomed attitudes for British capital.
The field has been far more attractive to the German banker, who is less of a proudly impassive usurer and more of a partner, who demands less than absolute security because he investigates more industriously and intelligently.This great bank, the Banca Commerciale Italiana, is a bank of the German type: to begin with, it was certainly dominated by German directors; it was a bank of stimulation, and its activities interweave now into the whole fabric of Italian commercial life.But it has already liberated itself from German influence, and the bulk of its capital is Italian.Nevertheless I found discussion ranging about firstly what the Banca Commerciale essentially /was/, secondly what it might /become/, thirdly what it might /do/, and fourthly what, if anything, had to be done to it.
It is a novelty to an English mind to find banking thus mixed up with politics, but it is not a novelty in Italy.All over Venetia there are agricultural banks which are said to be "clerical." I grappled with this mystery."How are they clerical?" I asked Captain Pirelli."Do they lend money on bad security to clerical voters, and on no terms whatever to anti-clericals?" He was quite of my way of thinking."/Pecunia non olet/," he said; "I have never yet smelt a clerical fifty lira note."...But on the other hand Italy is very close to Germany;she wants easy money for development, cheap coal, a market for various products.The case against the Germans--this case in which the Banca Commerciale Italiana appears, I am convinced unjustly, as a suspect--is that they have turned this natural and proper interchange with Italy into the acquisition of German power.That they have not been merely easy traders, but patriotic agents.It is alleged that they used their early "pull" in Italian banking to favour German enterprises and German political influence against the development of native Italian business; that their merchants are not bona-fide individuals, but members of a nationalist conspiracy to gain economic controls.
The German is a patriotic monomaniac.He is not a man but a limb, the worshipper of a national effigy, the digit of an insanely proud and greedy Germania, and here are the natural consequences.
