lian Commissions brought to Washington was the desperate
situation of the Allied cause. On that point not one of the visiting
statesmen or military and naval advisers made the slightest attempt at
concealment. Mr. Balfour emphasized the seriousness of the crisis in one
of his earliest talks with Mr. McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury. The
British statesman was especially interested in the financial situation
and he therefore took up this matter at an early date with the Treasury
Department.

"Mr. Balfour," said Mr. McAdoo, "before we make any plans of financial
assistance it is absolutely necessary that we know precisely where we
stand. The all-important thing is the question as to how long the war is
likely to last. If it is only to last a few months, it is evident that
we need to make very different arrangements than if it is to last
several years. Just what must we make provision for? Let us assume that
the United States goes in with all its men and resources--that we
dedicate all our money, our manufacturing plants, our army, our navy,
everything we have got, to bringing the war to an end. How long will it
take?"

Mr. Balfour replied that it would be necessary to consult his naval and
military advisers before he answered that question. He said that he
would return in a day or two and make an explicit statement. He did so
and his answer was this: Under these circumstances--that the United
States should make war to the full limit of its power, in men and
resources--the war could not be ended until the summer or the autumn of
1919. Mr. McAdoo put the same question in the same form to the French
and Italian Missions and obtained precisely the same answer.

Page's papers show that Mr. Balfour, in the early stages of American
participation, regarded the financial situation as the thing which
chiefly threatened the success of the Allied cause. So much greater
emphasis has been laid upon the submarine warfare that this may at first
seem rather a misreading of Great Britain's peril. Yet the fact is that
the high rate of exchange and the depredatory U-boat represented almost
identically the same danger. The prospect that so darkened the horizon
in the spring of 1917 was the possible isolation of Great Britain.
England's weakness, as always, consisted in the fact that she was an
island, that she could not feed herself with her own resources and that
she had only about six weeks' supply of food ahead of her at any one
time. I