s they register
$134,000,000,000. If wealth is the winning factor then the Allies have
the advantage in weight of buying metal.

Take the other side of the ledger and you see that up to November 1,
1916, the four principal allied countries, England, France, Russia and
Italy, had spent on direct war cost approximately $34,000,000,000, while
the total Teutonic war expenditures have been $21,000,000,000. To this
actual war cost must be added the peace debts of the belligerent nations
which would supplement the allied expense account by $17,465,000,000 and
that of the enemy nations by $9,808,000,000.

Striking a grand total of liabilities, you find that if the war
mercifully ends by August 1, 1917 (as Kitchener predicted it might), the
fighting peoples would face a debt burden of all kinds that had reached
$105,773,000,000.

After this colossal scale of expenditures you may well ask: Will it ever
be possible for European finance to see straight or count normally
again?

Be that as it may, no one can doubt that the battling nations,
individually or with the marvellous team-work that kinship in their
respective causes has begot, are able to pay their way while the
struggle lasts. Grim To-day will take care of itself under the stress of
passion born of desire to win. It is the Reckoning of that Uncertain
To-morrow that will prove to be the problem.

You cannot bankrupt a nation any more than you can ruin an individual so
long as brains and energy are available. Peace therefore will not find a
ruined Europe but it will dawn on a group of depleted countries facing
enormous responsibilities. War ends but the cost of it endures. Just as
present millions are paying with their lives so will unborn hosts pay
with the sweat of their brows.

Meanwhile our Financial Stake in the Great Struggle is secure. How much
more we will have to put into Europe's Red Pay Envelope remains to be
seen. In any event, we have learned how to do it.

VII--_The Man Lloyd George_

The door opened and almost before I had crossed the threshold the little
grey-haired man down at the end of the long stately room began to speak.
Lloyd George was in action.

I had last seen him a year ago in the murk of a London railway station
when I bade him farewell after a memorable day. With him I had gone to
Bristol where he had made an impassioned plea for harmony to the Trade
Union Congress. Then he was Minister of Munitions, Shell-Master of the
Nation