During the war a number of attempts were made to approximate the pre-war wealth and income of the leading nations. Perhaps the most ambitious of these efforts was contained in a paper on "Wealth and Income of the Chief Powers" read before the Royal Statistical Society. (See _The London Economist_, May 24, 1919, pp. 958-9.) This and other estimates were compiled by L. R. Gottlieb and printed in the _Quarterly Journal of Economics_ for Nov. 1919. Mr. Gottlieb estimates the pre-war national wealth of Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, Belgium, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria at 366,100 million dollars. At the same time the wealth of the United States was estimated at 204,400 million dollars. Thus the wealth of the United States was equal to about 36 per cent of the total wealth of the great nations in question. The same article contains an estimate of pre-war national incomes for these great powers. The total is placed at 81,100 million dollars. The income for the United States is placed at 35,300 million dollars, or more than 43 per cent of the total. The war has made important changes in the wealth and income of the principal powers. The wealth and income of Europe have been reduced, while the wealth and income of the United States have been greatly increased. This increase is rendered doubly emphatic by the demoralization in foreign exchange which gives the American dollar a position of unique authority in the financial world. The latest wealth estimates (_Commerce and Finance_, May 26, and July 28, 1920) in terms of dollars at their purchasing-power value, makes the wealth of the whole British Empire 230 billions of dollars; of France, 100 billions; of Russia, 60 billions; of Italy, 40 billions; of Japan, 40 billions; of Germany, 20 billions, and of the United States, 500 billions. These figures are subject to alteration with the alteration of the exchange rates, but they indicate the immense advantage that is possessed by the business men of the United States over the business men of any or of all of the other nations of the world. Before the war, the British were the chief lenders in the international field. In 1913 Great Britain had about 20 billions of dollars of foreign investments, as compared with 9 billions for France and about 6 billions for Germany. At the end of 1920, the British foreign investments had shrunk to a fraction of their former amount, while the United States, from the position of a debtor nation, had become the leading investing nation of the world, with over 9 billions of dollars loaned to the Allied governments; with notice loans estimated at over 10 billions; with foreign investments of 8 billions, and goods on consignment to the extent of 2 billions.