that of 1914. This alone should commend the League to all
men.

[160] It would be expedient so to define a "protectionist
tariff" as to permit (_a_) the total prohibition of certain imports;
(_b_) the imposition of sumptuary or revenue customs duties on
commodities not produced at home; (_c_) the imposition of customs duties
which did not exceed by more than five per cent a countervailing excise
on similar commodities produced at home; (_d_) export duties. Further,
special exceptions might be permitted by a majority vote of the
countries entering the Union. Duties which had existed for five years
prior to a country's entering the Union might be allowed to disappear
gradually by equal instalments spread over the five years subsequent to
joining the Union.

[161] The figures in this table are partly estimated, and are
probably not completely accurate in detail; but they show the
approximate figures with sufficient accuracy for the purposes of the
present argument. The British figures are taken from the White Paper of
October 23, 1919 (Cmd. 377). In any actual settlement, adjustments would
be required in connection with certain loans of gold and also in other
respects, and I am concerned in what follows with the broad principle
only. The total excludes loans raised by the United Kingdom on the
market in the United States, and loans raised by France on the market in
the United Kingdom or the United States, or from the Bank of England.

[162] This allows nothing for interest on the debt since the
Bolshevik Revolution.

[163] No interest has been charged on the advances made to
these countries.

[164] The actual total of loans by the United States up to date
is very nearly $10,000,000,000, but I have not got the latest details.

[165] The financial history of the six months from the end of
the summer of 1916 up to the entry of the United States into the war in
April, 1917, remains to be written. Very few persons, outside the
half-dozen officials of the British Treasury who lived in daily contact
with the immense anxieties and impossible financial requirements of
those days, can fully realize what steadfastness and courage were
needed, and how entirely hopeless the task would soon have become
without the assistance of the United States Treasury. The financial
problems from April, 1917, onwards were of an entirely different order
from those of the preceding months.

[166] Mr. Hoover was the only man who emerged from th