Belgium is staggering under an annual war assessment of 480,000,000 francs. Bucharest, after its capture by the Germans, was forced to pay a levy amounting to about 1900 francs per capita of the population. At Craiova the levy was 950 francs per capita. An edict forbids the circulation of paper money unless it has been specially stamped by the Germans, who retain 30 per cent of its nominal value. In April, 1917, the _Frankfurter Zeitung_ announced that the leaders of the Austro-German forces of occupation in Roumania would shortly call for an obligatory internal loan of a hundred million francs. In Poland, the German government has just issued a billion marks in paper money for enforced circulation. These are only single examples. _Theft of Specie, Jewels, and Securities._—In September, 1916, the Germans seized three quarters of a billion francs from the National Bank of Belgium in Brussels, which was subsequently transferred to Germany. In January, 1917, on the steamer Prinz Hendrick, they stole a million francs from a Belgian who was traveling from England, and took ten million francs’ worth of diamonds from the mail-bags. In the village of Vraignes, on March 18, 1917, the Germans, before evicting the inhabitants, stole from them the 13,800 francs they had in their possession. At Noyon—we learn from the official report already quoted—the Germans broke open and pillaged the safes of banks and private citizens before retiring from the town. The securities, jewels, and silver plate of Noyon represented a value of about eighteen million francs. And, as I have said, these are only random incidents. Taking into consideration, then, the present high prices of food-products, coal, metal, petroleum, war-material, machinery, and the rest, it can be seen at a glance that each one of the nine sources of booty just enumerated, on which the Germans have been steadily drawing, in some cases for as much as three years, has unquestionably yielded the value of several billions of francs,—certain of them, perhaps, tens of billions. Hence we may reasonably conclude that, without fixing a definite figure for the yield of these nine sources, the total plunder has mounted well up in the tens of billions. Another basis for calculating the worth of the invaded territories to Germany lies in the fact that the national fortunes of these countries, according to ante-bellum statistics, amounted to about 155 billions of francs. * * * * * We shall now examine the six other elements of Germany’s present advantageous situation—those which result from the domination which the war has enabled her to exert over her own allies, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey. This domination, which amounts practically to actual seizure, has permitted her to fulfill the scheme of Central Pan-Germany as a result of the crushing of Serbia. II _The second element of German advantage: the Pan-German loans_