both countries would still have something to spare to advance to their allies.  This is a most important consideration, for at the present moment the Allies are fighting the whole of the mobilized strength of Germany, with perhaps less than one-third of their own strength.  The problem of the war to the Allies is to bring the remaining two-thirds of their resources and strength into the fighting line at the earliest possible moment.  This is largely, though by no means entirely, a question of finance.

Russia is in a different position from either Britain or France.  She is a prodigiously rich country in natural resources—­about the richest country in the world in natural resources.  Food, raw material—­she produces practically every commodity.  She has a great and growing population, a virile and industrious people.  Her resources are overflowing and she has labor to develop them in abundance.  By a stroke of the pen Russia has since the war began enormously increased her resources by suppressing the sale of all alcoholic liquors. [Cheers.] It can hardly be realized that by that means alone she has increased the productivity of her labor by something between 30 and 50 per cent., just as if she had added millions of laborers to the labor reserves of Russia without even increasing the expense of maintaining them, and whatever the devastation of the country may be Russia has more than anticipated its wastage by that great act of national heroism and sacrifice. [Cheers.] The great difficulty with Russia is that, although she has great natural resources, she has not yet been able to command the capital within her own dominions to develop those resources even during the times of peace.  In time of war she has additional difficulties.  She cannot sell her commodities for several reasons.  One is that a good deal of what she depends upon for raising capital abroad will be absorbed by the exigencies of the war in her own country.  Beyond that the yield of her minerals will not be quite as great, because the labor will be absorbed in her armies.

There is not the same access to her markets.  She has difficulty in exporting her goods, and in addition to that her purchases abroad are enormously increased in consequence of the war.  Russia, therefore, has special difficulty in the matter of financing outside purchases for the war.  Those are some of the difficulties with which we were confronted.

France has also special difficulties.  I am not sure that we quite realize the strain put upon that gallant country [cheers] up to the present moment.  For the moment she bears far and away the greatest strain of the war in proportion to her resources.  She has the largest proportion of her men under arms.  The enemy are in occupation of parts of her richest territory.  They are within fifty-five miles of her capital, exactly as if we had a huge German army at Oxford.  It is only a few months since the bankers of Paris could hear the sound of the enemy’s guns from their counting houses, and they can hear the same sound now, some of them, from their country houses.  In those circumstances the money markets of a country are not at their very best.  That has been one of the difficulties with which France has been confronted in raising vast sums of money to carry on the war and helping to finance the allied States.