which no accurate estimate can be made, except by those who have access to the Arcana of the Treasury.  It may, however, be taken as roughly true that so far the extent of our total borrowings and realisation of securities abroad has been balanced by our loans to our Allies and Dominions, which amounted at the end of March last to L1526 millions.  We have thus entered into an enormous liability on foreign debts and sold a batch of very excellent securities on which we used to receive interest from abroad in the shape of goods and services, against which we now hold claims upon our Allies and Dominions, in respect to the greater part of which it would be absurd to pretend that we can rely on receiving interest for some years after the war, in view of the much greater economic strain imposed by the war upon our Allies.

Germany, of course, has been doing these things also.  Germany has parted with her foreign securities.  She was selling them in blocks for some weeks before the war, and Germany, of course, has done everything that she could in order to induce neutrals, during the course of the war, to buy securities from her and to subscribe to her War Loans.  Nevertheless, it cannot have been possible for Germany to carry out these operations to anything like the extent that we have, partly because her credit has not been nearly so good, partly because her ruthless and brutal conduct of the war has turned the sentiment of the world against her, and partly because the measures that we have taken to check remittances and transfers of money have not been altogether ineffective.  On this side of the problem Germany has therefore an advantage over us, that her war finance, pitiful a$ it has been, has, not owing to any virtue of hers, but owing to force of circumstances, raised her a problem which is to a great extent internal, and will not have altered her relation to the finance of other countries so much as has been the case with regard to ourselves.  We also have to remember that the process of demobilisation will be far simpler, quicker, and cheaper for Germany than for us.  Even if the war ended to-morrow the German Army would not have far to go in order to get home, and we hope that by the time the war ends the German Army will all have been driven back into its own country and so will be on its own soil, only requiring to be redistributed to its peace occupations.  Our Army will have to be fetched home, firstly, over Continental railways, probably battered into a condition of much inefficiency, and then in ships, of which the supply will be very short.  The process will be very slow and very costly.  Our Overseas Army will have to be sent back to distant Dominions, and the Army of our American Allies will have to be ferried back over the Atlantic.  Consequently if Germany is able to obtain anything like the supply of raw material that she requires she will be able to get back to peace business much more quickly than any of her Anglo-Saxon enemies, and this is an advantage on her side which it would be unwise to ignore in considering the bad effects on her after-war activities of the very questionable methods by which she has financed and is financing the war.