During the first five months in 1917 the Government of the United States reached a record for expenditures never before equalled in American history. The total amount expended was $1,600,000,000.
The chief item of the increase—$607,500,000—was the purchase of the obligations of foreign Governments in exchange for loans advanced to the Allies. The sum did not represent by approximately $140,000,000 the total amount authorized in loans. An increase of approximately $245,000,000 in the ordinary disbursements of the Government, chiefly due to military and naval needs, also was recorded and another item going to swell the grand total of expenditures was the payment of $25,000,000 for purchase of the Danish West Indies.
War loans of the six chief European belligerents, early in 1917, aggregated approximately $53,113,000,000.
Loans of the chief Entente nations, Great Britain, France, Russia and Italy, were placed at about $36,300,000,000; those of Germany and Austria-Hungary, not including the sixth German loan reported to have yielded about $3,000,000,000, at $18,800,000,000.
The amounts of the various loans were placed at:
Great Britain, to March 31, 1917, $18,805,000,000; France, to February 28, $10,500,000,000; Russia, to December 31, 1916, $7,896,000,000; Italy, to December 31, 1916, $2,520,000,000; Germany, to December 31, 1916, $11,226,000,000; Austria, to December 31, 1916, $5,880,000,000; Hungary, $1,730,000,000.
The total included the advances made by the United Kingdom and France to the smaller belligerent countries allied with them.
SOME IDEA OF NATIONAL FINANCING.
Some idea of what all this financing means to a country may be judged by the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who in October, 1916, replying to questions regarding the English loans in the House of Commons, declared that England was paying at that time about $10,000,000 a day in the United States, for every working day in the year.
When the English mission visited the United States in May, 1917, after the country had entered the war, there was handed to Arthur James Balfour, ex-Premier of England, a check for $200,000,000, said to have been one of the largest single checks ever paid in this country. It was a loan for war purposes. In the month of June it was stated that the total advance made to the Allies was $923,000,000, among the loans made then was one of $75,000,000 to Great Britain, and $3,000,000 to Servia. The Servian loan, the first made by the United States to that country, was mainly for the improvement of railway lines. A small portion was used for the relief of the distressed population, and Red Cross work.