In 1917 France had the heaviest budget in all her history. The single item of taxes was raised to six billion francs ($1,200,000), and these taxes were paid to the penny, although ten million Frenchmen were mobilized in the Army, in the factories, and on the farms, or were untaxable in the occupied regions.
In 1915, 1916 and 1917 France raised three great national loans. That of 1915 amounted to exactly 13,307,811,579 francs, 40 centimes, of which 6,017 millions were paid in hard cash. That of October, 1916, amounted in round numbers to ten billions francs, of which more than five billions were paid in hard cash. That of December, 1917, amounted to 10,629,000,000 francs, of which 5,254 millions were paid in cash.
Thus, in spite of the war, her invaded territories, and her mobilized citizens, France has in three years raised three national loans of almost seventeen billions francs in hard cash. That is three times the amount of the war indemnity she paid Prussia in 1871.
A nation worn out and bled white has no more monetary reserve, no more funds in its treasury, and has been brought into bankruptcy. The Bank of France, which is probably the leading national bank in the world, whose credit has never weakened in the gravest hours of the nation's history, declared on the first of January, 1918, a gold reserve of 5,348 millions of francs, an increase of 272 millions over the gold in hand on January first, 1917. This is the greatest deposit the bank has ever had. All this came from the national resources: the weekly payments are still a million and a half francs, which are paid without compulsion and without legal processes.
The individual deposits in the great credit establishments of France which, on the thirty-first of December, 1914, amounted to only 4,050 millions of francs, amounted to 6,050 millions on the thirty-first of December, 1917.
And during the first three months of the year 1918, from the first of January to the thirty-first of March, the surplus deposits made by the peasants and the working classes in the National Saving Bank was seventy-five millions of francs, an excess of more than eight hundred thousand francs daily.
A nation that is worn out and bled white is incapable of manufacturing and sees its commerce and industry perish. Here is the statement of M. Georges Pallain, Governor of the Bank of France, representing the accounting of the Counsel General of the Bank for 1917:
From the industrial and commercial point of view, a satisfactory amelioration is noticeable. The investigation of the Minister of Industry in July last permits the statement that the percentage of factories and business houses rendering a periodical accounting, of which the advantage is not yet established, is only twenty-three per cent; it was fifty-five per cent in August, 1914.