Evidently England will get more of our help than any
other nation because her shores are more accessible. Germany is more
isolated. Unless she possesses a larger food stock than commercial
statistics indicate she will be pressing for our food supplies, which
may reach her indirectly, we selling to Holland and Holland to Germany;
also reversely, via Holland or via Austria and Italy, Germany may sell a
stream of securities the other end of which we receive. Whether directly
or by devious routes there will inevitably be, so far as I can see, a
vast exchange of commodities passing to Europe for securities coming
from Europe. In this interchange will be found the dominant economic
effect of the war on the United States.
Foreign nations will get their much-needed loans on better terms, even
if less promptly, by the circuitous process mentioned than if they
could borrow directly in our markets; for their own citizens will pay
higher prices than we would, even if, to get the money, they have to
sell their other investment securities to us at a considerable
sacrifice. England has sold Treasury bills for seventy-five millions of
dollars on as low a "basis" as 3-3/4 per cent.
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