The submarine has added the last item to the danger of a financial world crash.

There is now an uncertainty about our being drawn into the war; no more considerable credits can be privately placed in the United States.

In the meantime a collapse may come.
PAGE.
Urgent as this message was, it really understated the desperate condition of British and Allied finances.

That the warring powers were extremely pressed for money has long been known; but Page's papers reveal for the first time the fact that they were facing the prospect of bankruptcy itself.

"The whole Allied combination on this side the ocean are very much nearer the end of their financial resources," he wrote in July, "than anybody has guessed or imagined.