“Mr. Arthur Balfour, speaking in the House of Commons last night, paid a glowing tribute to the memory of Peter the Great.  Roubles rose.”

“The local Bolsheviki of New York City at the Pan-Russian Congress held in Murphy’s Rooms, Fourth Avenue, voted unanimously in favor of a Free Russia.  Roubles never budged.”

With these examples in view, anybody, I think, could grasp the central principles of Russian finance.  All that one needed to know was what M. Touchusoff and such people were going to say, and who would be thrown into the Neva, and the rise and fall of the rouble could be foreseen to a kopeck.  In speculation by shrewd people with proper judgment as to when to buy and when to sell the rouble, large fortunes could be made, or even lost, in a day.

But after all the Russian finance was simple.  That of our German enemies was much more complicated and yet infinitely more successful.  That at least I gathered from the little news items in regard to German finance that used to reach us in cables that were headed Via Timbuctoo and ran thus:—­

“The fourth Imperial War Loan of four billion marks, to be known as the Kaiser’s War Loan, was oversubscribed to-day in five minutes.  Investors thronged the banks, with tears in their eyes, bringing with them everything that they had.  The bank managers, themselves stained with tears, took everything that was offered.  Each investor received a button proudly displayed by the too-happy-for-words out-of-the-bank-hustling recipient.”

6.—­Some Just Complaints About the War

No patriotic man would have cared to lift up his voice against the Government in war time.  Personally, I should not want to give utterance even now to anything in the way of criticism.  But the complaints which were presented below came to me, unsought and unsolicited, and represented such a variety of sources and such just and unselfish points of view that I think it proper, for the sake of history, to offer them to the public.

I give them, just as they reached me, without modifications of any sort.

The just complaint of Mr. Threadler, my tailor, as expressed while measuring me for my Win-the-War autumn suit.

“Complaint, sir?  Oh, no, we have no complaint to make in our line of business, none whatever (forty-two, Mr. Jephson).  It would hardly become us to complain (side pockets, Mr. Jephson).  But we think, perhaps, it is rather a mistake for the Government (thirty-three on the leg) to encourage the idea of economy in dress.  Our attitude is that the well dressed man (a little fuller in the chest?  Yes, a little fuller in the chest, please, Mr. Jephson) is better able to serve his country than the man who goes about in an old suit.  The motto of our trade is Thrift with Taste.  It was made up in our spring convention of five hundred members, in a four day sitting.  We feel it to be (twenty-eight) very appropriate.  Our feeling is that a gentleman wearing one of our