in part payment. Even if she pledged her properties and securities as Germany has done, and found sufficient gold to pay for the balance of her imports, one has difficulty in coming to the conclusion that she will be able to continue the war for any great length of time unless she receives financial assistance from Germany.
A German financier, a director of the Deutsche Bank, has made a comparison between the financial condition of Germany and of this country. He contends that Berlin has passed through the financial crisis better than London, inasmuch as we in England had to introduce a Moratorium and they had not. He might also have said: "See how we in Germany have been preparing to meet this crisis, while you in your simplicity have done nothing! At the beginning of 1910, the year before the Agadir difficulty, we Germans had only about 30 millions sterling of gold in the Reichsbank; in January, 1911, the year of the Agadir difficulty, we had about 36 millions; in January, 1912, the year after the trouble, we had about 40 millions; in January, 1913, we had about 45 millions; in January, 1914, we had about 60 millions; we commenced the war with about 68 millions; and at the present time we have about 106 millions. We have increased our gold during these years by keeping up our bank rate to 5 and 6 per cent.; by selling exchange on London to prevent gold leaving us; by threatening our bankers with a blunderbuss if they dared to export gold; by taking from England large amounts of South African gold, even at a loss; by putting out small notes in order to drive gold into the bank; by coining silver and putting that into circulation to drive in the gold; by paying State employees in small notes instead of gold; and since the outbreak of war our supply has been further augmented—by stopping people at the frontiers, taking their gold from them and giving them notes; by clerics preaching to the people to give up their gold and take notes; by melting down gold ornaments and sending the gold into the Reichsbank in exchange for notes; by giving soldiers certain leave of absence if they could collect ten-mark gold pieces and longer leave for twenty-mark pieces, also in exchange for notes." In fact, he might have summed up the whole position in the words of an American writer who said: "When the pinch arises Germany will organize herself economically as thoroughly and as ruthlessly as she organized her armies," and he might have said, in the words of another German banker, "Every mark
