verishment by the war.

A statement by Reginald McKenna, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, in the House of Commons on July 13, showed that
approximately L600,000,000, or $3,000,000,000, had been
subscribed, making this the greatest war loan raised in the
history of any nation. The total number of subscribers
through the Bank of England was 550,000, aggregating
L570,000,000, or $2,850,000,000, while 547,000 persons had
subscribed $75,000,000 through the Post Office. Besides this
no estimate of the small vouchers taken out had been made,
and the Post Office subscriptions had not been closed. The
gigantic total, Mr. McKenna said, represented only new
money, and not any stock which will be issued for purposes
of conversion. Prime Minister Asquith's speech appears in
full below.

_In his speech in the Guildhall, London, on June 29, 1915, Mr. Asquith
said:_

This is, I think, the third time since the war began that I have had
the privilege of addressing you in this hall. On the first occasion,
as far back as September last, I came here to appeal to you to supply
men to be trained to fight our battles at the front. Today I have come
to ask you here in the City of London for what is equally necessary
for the success of our cause--for the ways and means which no
community in the Empire is better qualified to provide, to organise,
and to replenish.

This is the costliest war that has ever been waged. A hundred years
ago our ancestors spent eight hundred millions to vindicate, as we are
vindicating today, the freedom of Europe, in a war which lasted the
best part of 20 years, which brings out a rough average of
considerably less than a million pounds a week. Our total expenditure
today approaches for one year a thousand millions, and we are spending
now, and are likely to spend for weeks and months to come, something
like three million pounds a day. Our daily revenue from taxation, I
suppose, works out less than three-quarters of a million per day.

Those are facts which speak for themselves, and they show the urgent
necessity, not only for a loan, but for a national loan--a loan far
larger in its scale, far broader in its basis, and far more imperious
in its demand upon every class and every section of the community than
any in our history.

For the first time in our financial experience no limit has been
placed on the amount to be raised; and that me