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.