s come the honor of making the light artillery for the
American Army--amounting to several hundred guns per month.

* * * * *

A nation that is worn out and bled white has an empty treasury and is
no longer able to obtain taxes from its ruined citizens. Let us
consider what France had done in a financial way in this war.

From the first of August, 1914, to the first of January, 1918, the
French Parliament voted war credits amounting to twenty billions of
dollars. Of this enormous fund only two billions have been borrowed
from outside sources; all the remainder has been subscribed or paid
for by taxation or by loans in France herself. More than a billion
dollars has been loaned to her Allies by France.

In 1917 France had the heaviest budget in all her history. The single
item of taxes was raised to six billion francs ($1,200,000), and these
taxes were paid to the penny, although ten million Frenchmen were
mobilized in the Army, in the factories, and on the farms, or were
untaxable in the occupied regions.

In 1915, 1916 and 1917 France raised three great national loans. That
of 1915 amounted to exactly 13,307,811,579 francs, 40 centimes, of
which 6,017 millions were paid in hard cash. That of October, 1916,
amounted in round numbers to ten billions francs, of which more than
five billions were paid in hard cash. That of December, 1917, amounted
to 10,629,000,000 francs, of which 5,254 millions were paid in cash.

Thus, in spite of the war, her invaded territories, and her mobilized
citizens, France has in three years raised three national loans of
almost seventeen billions francs in hard cash. That is three times the
amount of the war indemnity she paid Prussia in 1871.

A nation worn out and bled white has no more monetary reserve, no more
funds in its treasury, and has been brought into bankruptcy. The Bank
of France, which is probably the leading national bank in the world,
whose credit has never weakened in the gravest hours of the nation's
history, declared on the first of January, 1918, a gold reserve of
5,348 millions of francs, an increase of 272 millions over the gold in
hand on January first, 1917. This is the greatest deposit the bank has
ever had. All this came from the national resources: the weekly
payments are still a million and a half francs, which are paid without
compulsion and without legal processes.

The individual deposits in the great credit establishments o