"Brutal Frankness'''

Count Giuseppe Volpi, brilliant, suave, self-made Finance Minister, spoke to the Senate, last week, with what he styled "brutal frankness." The Government, he said, had put the lira on a gold basis (TIME, Jan. 2), but it will not go further and issue gold coins. Secondly, the Government will shortly lift most of the restrictions on foreign trading and exchange transactions with private Italian interests. Thirdly, notice is again given that Italy will continue repaying her debt to the U. S. only so long as her receipts from German reparations continue.

During his address Count Volpi strikingly exhibited the fact that there are two opposed concepts of a debt. The first, generally professed by Anglo-Saxons, is that of an obligation which must be met simply because it exists. The second, based by Latins on experience, is to regard the entire voluntary repayment of a debt as a phenomenon both mystical and meritorious. Said Count Volpi:

"I do not know what fate history reserves for the Washington-London debt settlements during the next sixty years. What is certain is that no further sacrifice can be asked of the Italian nation than the giving up of the whole of her German reparations to paying off her War debts."