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