was $17,000,000,000. From these figures it appeared that Britain and her Allies could, under any system of organized finance, carry on the War indefinitely-with a national wealth which was nine times the total cost of 31⁄2 years of titanic struggle and a national income exceeding the yearly total of war costs. Such an organization did not, of course, exist but similar principles of finance did control all the Allies and mutual helpfulness amongst the greater Powers took the place, to a substantial degree, of any paper union or exact bases of co-operation.

It must be added too, for the benefit of theorists, that so long as trade and production continued only part of the money spent in the War was lost or destroyed. Property and values were destroyed but the total of the former in three years of world-war was estimated at only $6,000,000,000-a bagatelle in such a conflict-while values changed and returned under ever-changing conditions. Money during the War changed hands but unless lost in a rare shipping or explosive disaster it was not destroyed. The real injury was in expenditure upon things which were not reproductive or permanent; but the money itself was not lost and the profits, interest, revenues, derived from its continuous turnover made for individual prosperity. Of course, the supply was limited and from that condition-as war demands increase there came high prices, and the dangers of inflated currency. One effect of this condition was a great demand for silver in Britain, France, Italy, Russia and India, as being preferable to paper currency, and a phenomenal rise in its value which was marked by a selling price in New York (early in 1917) of 79 cents an ounce, or an increase of 20 cents over the 1914 average. Meanwhile, the world's gold production ($458,000,000 in 1916) was decreasing slightly and its silver supply (177,000,000 ounces in 1916) was decreasing considerably. The gold reserves of the Allied countries* at the close of 1916 (United Kingdom, Russia, France and Italy) was 1,849 million dollars, or about the same as on Dec. 31, 1913; those of Germany were 600 millions compared with 278 millions, and those of Austria were unobtainable; those of the six European Neutral countries had increased from 245 to 668 millions. The note circulation of the Allies (chiefly Russia and France) had increased from 2,650 to 8,957 millions, of Germany 617 to 1,917 millions, and of the neutral Powers from 699 to 1,115 millions.

As to the Public Debts which future generations would liquidate or pay interest upon, Alfred Neymarck, the French statistician, estimated the European total in 1914 at $32,000,000,000 and in the beginning of 1917 at about $135,000,000,000. At the close of the year the total must have been approximately $175,000,000,000. Turning to another topic it may be said that if the democracy of Britain and her Allied countries in the high and specially-ordered sphere of financial control had been successful in this great test of the ages, so also had the fighting spirit, action and, at times, success of its soldiers been unquestioned. When failure came it was due to the lack of discipline so clearly expressed in the Russian and Italian débâcles of the year. Still greater, if possible, were those Services

*NOTE -Official Statistics: Federal Reserve Bulletin, Washington.

of organized efficiency-the British Navy, the Aviators and the Medical Corps.

What of the comparative man-power, the relative casualties of the opposing nations? In 32 years of struggle there had been nearly 50 millions of men engaged in fighting or held as reserves ready to spring. There had been campaigns in Poland, East Prussia and Galicia, in France and Belgium, in Mesopotamia and Egypt, Palestine and Persia, in Syria and Armenia, in Courland and Lithuania, in the Caucasus and Carpathians and the Alps, in Hungary and Roumania, Serbia and Greece, in South and East and West Africa. The losses were terrific, the casualties myriad in number, the details impossible of full analysis. Individual estimates were so varied as to make the thinking public during these years very skeptical of all expert statements. Germany was so continuously represented as suffering great losses, Austria was so frequently on its last legs or in a state of absolute exhaustion, Turkey was so often ready for a starved and beaten submission, that some of the statistics issued in this connection were little honoured. There was considerable divergence as to casualties and also as to available Teutonic man-power. Taking Germany alone J. W. Gerard, the late U. S. Ambassador at Berlin, estimated the original call to the colours at 12,000,000 and General de Lacroix, of Paris, at 13,100,000; F. H. Simonds, a generally-reliable American expert, placed that of Austria at 8,500,000; the Manchester Guardian estimated the totals at 9,000,000 for Germany and 7,000,000 for Austria-Hungary, with 2,000,000 for Turkey and 500,000 for Bulgaria-a total of about 23,000,000. For the British Allies this estimate included the following figures: British Empire 7,000,000, France 6,000,000, Russia 15,000,000 and the lesser countries 750,000-a total of 26,500,000. Up to Aug. 1, 1917, semi-official statistics of casualties, compiled at Washington and claimed to be approximately correct, were as follows:

It was added that 80% of the Entente wounded returned to the colours and 85% of the German wounded. A possibly more correct estimate than this and one more generally accepted was that an average of 60% were fit for service again. As to the numbers of men available or remaining on the Teuton fronts the figures were

very divergent.* Colonel E. P. Repington of the London Times stated that at the close of 1916 there were 128 German divisions on the Western front and 106 German, Austrian and Turkish divisions on the Eastern front, 29 mixed divisions on the Roumanian and 12 on the Austrian, with 33 Austrian divisions on the Italian fronta total of 308 divisions or between five and six million men. M. André Tardieu, French High Commissioner at Washington, wrote the U. S. Secretary of War on July 30 that 3,000,000 men were then in the Army of France at the front and that casualties were distinctly lessening in proportion to mobilized strength.

General Sir William Robertson, Chief of the British Staff, stated (Apr. 4) that there then were 24,000,000 men in the armies of the belligerents; General de Lacroix told Le Temps, Paris, on June 19 that out of Germany's original 13,000,000 a total of 3,630,000 were definite losses or casualties, 2,200,000 had been rejected as unfit with 1,110,000 wounded and under treatment or resident abroad, leaving a total of 6,190,000-which was a little larger than Colonel Repington's estimate of six months earlier. F. H. Simonds telegraphed the New York Tribune from French Headquarters on Sept. 20 that the Associated Press was able to give approximately the figures representing the man-power of Germany in the War, at that time, together with the casualties, as follows: "Fixed formations on the various fronts, employed on lines of communication and stationed in the interior, 5,500,000; Divisions undergoing formation and men in depôts, 600,000; losses in killed, permanently disabled and prisoners, 4,000,000; wounded, under treatment in hospitals, 500,000-total 10,600,000." To this total another correspondent (Henry Wood) added 700,000 for still unincorporated classes of 1919 and 1920. J. W. Gerard's estimate of effectives available early in 1917 was 9,000,000, with 400,000 new men of military age each year. Mr. Gerard's figures do not appear in his book, My Four Years in Germany, and may be considered as exaggerated. Mr. Simonds estimated that, after the elimination of Russia, Austria had about 3,500,000 and that Italy had at least 3,000,000 men available.

Taking the general estimate of 6,000,000 for Germany with M. Tardieu's statement of 3,000,000 French troops and Mr. Lloyd George's estimate of 3,000,000 available British troops, together with 2,000,000 Turks and Bulgarians and 800,000 of lesser Entente Allies, it would seem that the year 1917-excluding Russia, Japan and the United States-closed with the nations at war holding forces in the fighting line, or as active reserves, of about 21,000,000-very nearly equally divided with, perhaps, a balance in favour of the Germans. The statistical situation was much worse for the Entente than at the beginning of the year; the real position depended on how soon the United States could get into the conflict seriously. The tremendous advantage of reserve man-power in the Entente Alliance over that of the Central Powers obviously was not visible in the fighting ranks after Russia had dropped out, with India, Japan, China, etc., excluded from practical consideration and the United States still unready.

*NOTE. Some careful estimates were given in this Section of The Canadian Annual Review for 1916.

Such a position was calculated to arouse pessimism but, as a matter of fact, it was not known to the public in the detail given above nor appreciated by the masses of the people in British or other Entente countries. There was, also, the obvious and immense reserve which the United States constituted, there was the successful financial policy of the Allies and their superior bases of wealth and credit already referred to, there were the greater possibilities of industrial strength available when the organization of the United States should be completed. On the Western front there might, during 1917, be some Socialistic trouble in the French ranks and privations and bitter battles elsewhere but there was superb optimism amongst the soldiers in general and absolute confidence as to superior morale and, until the artillery of the Eastern Front came, there was assurance as to the superiority of artillery and aeroplanes.

The recovery of the valuable strategical ridges around Ypres, in Flanders, the retreat of the Germans in the Somme, Oise and Aisne regions, their defeat at Vimy, and Messines, and Passchendaele, the Battle of Arras with its capture of 250 guns and 20,000 prisoners and German casualties placed at 250,000, the wiping out of the Noyon Salient, the advance to the walls of St. Quentin, Laon and Lens, the partial success at Cambrai, all gave colour to this confidence and strength to the Allies. So in the Near East with a British spectacular success at Bagdad and Jerusalem and the occupation of Mecca by the Arabs. But the great point in this connection was that raised and stated by Sir William Robertson in an interview (New York Times) on Aug. 6: "Armies in the field are only a part of this tremendous conflict. Suppose we conclude that no army of millions can be broken and crushed. Is the same thing to be supposed of the nation behind the army? Surely we see in this great contest much more than a struggle of armed forces. It is a sifting of nations, a trial of character, a test of racial quality."

Of war weapons and inventions during this period it must be said that they were as wonderful as in some cases they were horrible. In 1914 there had been the 42 centimetre gun which pulverized fortifications that were supposedly impregnable; in 1915 came the poison gas which added new horrors to the War; in 1916 the "Tank" developed and in 1917 came the depth bomb which attacked Submarines so successfully. As to gas there were four main kinds employed by the Germans: (1) one which made the eyes smart and weep so copiously as to temporarily impair their use; (2) the gas that especially attacked and burned the tender parts of the body; (3) the kind that shrivelled the mucous membrane and wholly blinded the victim for 90 hours; (4) the gas that was projected in a ball-envelope, which dropped without noise and opened without explosion to release odourless but fatal fumes.

Associated with these weapons of war was the method of propaganda-the issue of floods of literature by the different countries, ranging from millions of leaflets, and pamphlets up to thousands of books. The German system was exceptionally varied and skilful and vast in the volume of its secret literature. But Great Britain also did active work and one organization alone, the Over-Seas Club,

issued in various languages to meet German arguments a total of 2,000,000 pamphlets. These publications had more general diffusion than books, yet the latter, through touching the pulse of intellectual and political and journalistic forces in different countries, probably wielded an equal influence. Statistics in this connection* indicated that about 1,200 books dealing with the World-War had been issued at the beginning of 1917.

The year ended with varied lights and shadows for the world, with mingled pride and pain for the Allies, with suppressed and concealed suffering in Teuton countries. Anxious world-wide eyes were looking into a future still dark with possible horrors, the sound was everywhere heard of marching hosts in new and greater armies. There was the continued piling up of vast armaments, the prospect of starvation for multitudes of people, the sound in the tree-tops of revolution and change and rough-shod action in the world's social strata. The brightness lay in the continued heroism of vast forces of men-far more voluntary and initiative in character on the one side than on the other; in an almost unexpected self-sacrifice and self-control shown by the democracies involved and only brought into more vivid view by the lurid leaders of Russian anarchy; in the light of women's work and endurance in all the war-swept lands.

The Entente Allies were engaged in the stupendous task of carrying munitions and men and supplies upon all the Seven Seas with submarines and sudden death lurking everywhere. England, at the close of the year, needed men, munitions and money, Italy food, steel and coal, France food, munitions, money, credits and men ---everything in fact. The United States, in a splendid but still disorganized effort, had a million men in training and at least 300,000 untrained, unarmed men in France; its War estimates were gigantic and the demands upon its resources in wheat, coal and iron, machinery and ships, motors and food, were all equally great. Britain was ringing with insistent demands for reprisals upon the enemy for continued war brutalities and smashing of international laws while General Smuts, who was one of the leaders in the agitation for such a policy-as the Archbishop of Canterbury was in opposition to itannounced on Oct. 4 that air reprisals had at last been reluctantly decided upon.

Great Britain faced the menace of German reinforcements pouring into the Western field of operations with, according to Mr. Lloyd George, 3,000,000 fighting men overseas and with a record of transportation summed up in the official statement of General F. D. Maurice that the daily importation of war material into France was 11 tons per hour in January, 1917, and 24 tons per hour in September. To the Allied nations and to her Dominions Britain, at the year end, appealed earnestly for increased food production and everything in the way of world data proved the need of the appeal—a threatened and desperate shortage of food in the coming year. To rulers and public men the year brought fresh proof of the personal havoc wrought by war. The Czar of all the Russias was gone, King

*NOTE: F. W. T. Lange in Annotated Bibliography of Literature Issued During the European Conflict.