"But the day is coming at great distance when this situation will undergo an obvious modicati When France as well as Italy has funded her debts, both to this country and to the United States, and when the minor Powers have all funded their debts, then it is quite clear that the United States will be wen We have no selfish alme to We desire no conquest, 10 Dominion, We seeks no indent for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make'
"It was in that kind of altruistic mood that the United States entered the War. It was recognized that for some time she would not be able to do much by supplying men for} the fighting front. She declared that the best service she could render to the Allied cause wouti be! to act as the Allies' banker.
"In the official Bulletin issued cly! the American Treasury in connexion with the raising of the War loans there, it was stated that the [ans were essential to American intervention, not alone in a military way, but "for our economic protection and welfare.' If it were necessary for the protection and the welfare of the United States of America t> enter the War in 1917, it was equally necessary for her to do so in 1914. But for two and a-half years she had remained outside.
She had profited greatly, she tuid vastly. enriched her purse, and by'! claying her. entry. into the War, had saved. two and. a-half years' receiving, directly and indirectly, on her own' account from reparations, from Italian sources, balanced against reparations, from—Britist sources, from French sources through British hands, from Italian sources through' British hands—by all these various channels, indirectly or directly—America will' be receiving by far the large part, at least 60 per cent., of probable' reparations of Germany, and the first reparations, the first 60 per cent., as it were, which will be payable by Germany. That is the ig I have to say on this subject Tt seems to me an extraordinary situation that will he developed—that by all these chains and and channels, the pressure of debt extraction will draw reparations through the different channels from the devastated and war-stricken countries of Europe, which will ov' in an unbroken stream across the Atlantic to that wealthy and prosperous and great Republic. believe that these facts will not pass out of the minds of any responsible persons, either la the United States or in Europe."
Mr. Philip Scowden also dgats with the, subject in a special article
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.