ically independent. There is still $1,780,000,000 of our
securities held abroad, and if the war keeps on much longer a great
portion of it is likely to come back.

There were two good reasons for this liquidation. One was that the
holder of the American security in England is subject to a very high
tax in addition to the normal income tax on large fortunes. Another was
the necessity for the mobilisation of American securities to become part
of the collateral offered by the British Government for the loans made
in this country. In many instances the English owner of American
securities has simply loaned them to his country as a patriotic act. In
numerous other cases, however, he has sold them outright and put the
proceeds into home war issues.

You have seen how our millions have joined that greater stream of
European billions to meet the rising tide of war cost. How is this vast
debt to be paid and what is the paying capacity of the nations involved?

In analysing the war debt and its costly hangover for posterity, you
must remember that not all of it is in actual money. The nations at war
have not only taxed their economic reserve through the destruction of
productive capacity in the loss of men and material--as I have already
pointed out--but have made a costly and well-nigh permanent drain upon
what might be called their nervous systems.

Look for a moment at the American Civil War whose cost was a mere flea
bite as compared with the stupendous price of the European
Conflagration. At the end of that war only half of its reckoning was
represented in the country's bonded debt. After fifty years we are still
paying in some way for the other and larger outlay, the invisible strain
on the country.

Strange as it may seem in the light of the present frightful ravage in
Europe, no country has ever been completely ravaged by war. When I
returned from Europe more than a year ago, I was convinced that economic
exhaustion would be the determining factor: that victory would perch on
the side of the biggest bank roll. After a second trip to the warring
lands I am convinced that I was wrong in my first impression.
Observation again in England and France leads me to believe that man
power--beef, not gold--will win. The extents to which financial credit
can be extended in the countries at war seem to be almost without limit.

This leads to the final but all essential detail: How will the European
nations pay?

Since the Alli