Excerpt from The World's War Debt: A Record and Analysis of the Financial Obligations Left by the War, in Their Relation to the World at Large For the present, therefore, the balance sheet of the war is an obscure one, with the losses tangible and the gains yet to be fully determined. In this volume we have sought to deal with a single item on the tangible side of the war's balance sheet - that item which is made up of the indebted ness of the nations. The reader will find in the following pages material that has been brought together for the pur pose of information. The need for a statistical summary of the finances of the recent struggle was the sole incentive in carrying out the work. It is hoped that what we have done will prove to be of real and lasting value. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.