This incomparable war industry has permitted us not only to fight, to
defend ourselves and to attack the enemy, but also to supply our
friends, our Allies, with the munitions necessary to fight. Up to
January, 1918, these are the amounts of munitions France was able to
hand over to the nations fighting at her side in Europe:
1,350,000 rifles
800,000,000 cartridges
16,000,000 automatic rifles
10,000 mitrailleuses
2,500 heavy guns
4,750 airplanes
And to France has come the honor of making the light artillery for the
American Army--amounting to several hundred guns per month.
* * * * *
A nation that is worn out and bled white has an empty treasury and is
no longer able to obtain taxes from its ruined citizens. Let us
consider what France had done in a financial way in this war.
From the first of August, 1914, to the first of January, 1918, the
French Parliament voted war credits amounting to twenty billions of
dollars. Of this enormous fund only two billions have been borrowed
from outside sources; all the remainder has been subscribed or paid
for by taxation or by loans in France herself. More than a billion
dollars has been loaned to her Allies by France.
In 1917 France had the heaviest budget in all her history.
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