On one hand you have the assets of the warring countries as represented
by their national wealth. For the Allies, including Roumania, they show
a total of $273,000,000,000: for the Central Powers 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.
Pages:
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150