4,135
Russia | 190 | 2,840[162]| 800 | 3,830
Belgium | 400 | 490[163]| 450 | 1,340
Serbia and | | | |
Jugo-Slavia | 100 | 100[163]| 100 | 300
Other Allies | 175 | 395 | 250 | 820
| ----- | ----- | ----- | ------
Total | 9,450[164]| 8,700 | 1,775 | 19,925
| | | |
-----------------+------------+------------+-----------+----------

Thus the total volume of Inter-Ally indebtedness, assuming that loans
from one Ally are not set off against loans to another, is nearly
$20,000,000,000. The United States is a lender only. The United Kingdom
has lent about twice as much as she has borrowed. France has borrowed
about three times as much as she has lent. The other Allies have been
borrowers only.

If all the above Inter-Ally indebtedness were mutually forgiven, the
net result on paper (_i.e._ assuming all the loans to be good) would be
a surrender by the United States of about $10,000,000,000 and by the
United Kingdom of about $4,500,000,000. France would gain about
$3,500,000,000 and Italy about $4,000,000,000. But these figures
overstate the loss to the United Kingdom and understate the gain to
France; for a large part of the loans made by both these countries has
been to Russia and cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be considered
good. If the loans which the United Kingdom has made to her Allies are
reckoned to be worth 50 per cent of their full value (an arbitrary but
convenient assumption which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has adopted
on more than one occasion as being as good as any other for the purposes
of an approximate national balance sheet), the operation would involve
her neither in loss nor in gain. But in whatever way the net result is
calculated on paper, the relief in anxiety which such a liquidation of
the position would carry with it would be very great. It is from the
United States, therefore, that the proposal asks generosity.

Speaking with a very intimate knowledge of the relations throughout the
war between the British, the American, and the other Allied Treasuries,
I believe this to be an act of generosity for which Europe can fairly
ask, provided Europe is making an honorable attempt in other
directions, not to continue w