Russia was the first of the Entente Powers to issue public loans. On September 14, 1914, it issued a 5 per cent. loan at 94, yielding $259,000,000. This was followed at regular intervals by six more loans prior to the revolution of 1917. After the revolution there was considerable confusion which, of course, was much accentuated by the advent of Bolshevism. The consequence was that the public debt of Russia, which amounted for July, 1914, to $4,623,000,000, increased by the time of the October revolution in 1917 to 49,288 millions of rubles or 25,383 millions of dollars. This would mean a war debt of almost twenty-one billions of dollars. As a matter of fact of course it is very uncertain whether the debt will ever be redeemed at these figures. The debt of Italy before it entered the war amounted to lire 13,636,000,000 or $2,621,000,000. Italy started at once with a so-called mobilization loan followed by its first war loan in July, 1915, and successive war loans on the first of January of each of the following years. The result was that on October 31, 1918, the total debt amounted to lire 63,093,000,000 or $12,177,000,000. By the end of May, 1919, the debt had grown to 77,763,000,000 lire or $15,009,000,000 leaving as the war debt lire 64,127,000,000 or $12,388,000,000. Of the Central Powers, Germany started at once on October 1, 1914, to issue a war loan at 5 per cent., having from the outset decided to rely upon comparatively long time bonds rather than upon temporary or short time securities as was the case in England and in France. There followed in regular succession eight war loans bearing 4½ and 5½ per cent. interest. As a result, the debt of Germany, which before the war amounted to Mk. 4,732,000,000 increased on October 31, 1919, to Mk. 204,000,000,000 or $48,552,000,000; the war debt proper in Germany would therefore amount to $47,426,000,000. TOTAL WAR DEBT, UNITED STATES When the United States entered the war it depended, for the time being, on temporary war certificates. But at the beginning of June, 1917, Liberty Loans were issued in continually greater dimensions. In the table below the details of the four Liberty Loans and the Fifth Victory Loan are given, showing that over $20,000,000,000 were raised from bonds alone. To these is to be added the unfunded loans. It appears that the total net debt of the United States, which in April, 1917, was $1,190,000,000, increased by June 30, 1919, to $24,232,000,000, making a war debt of $23,042,000,000. Inasmuch, however, as somewhat over a billion dollars from the Victory Loan will be paid in the course of the year 1919--20, and as still more will have to be borrowed temporarily, the total war debt of the United States by the end of 1920 will amount to over $25,000,000,000, including the nine billions advanced to the Allies.