| OCR Text |
Show INVESTMENT SAFE. Assistant Secretary. of the Treasury Leffingwcll tells the house committee inquiring into the matter that every dollar of loans and credits advanced by the United States to foreign countries during tho world war is amply protected protect-ed by securities and will be repaid. Not much anxiety has been expressed in any quarter as to the loans and credits cred-its extended to France or Great Britain or Italy or Belgium. Those loans are regarded as secure, although necessarily necessar-ily it will be a long timo before more than interest payments is made by the debtor nations. It is Kussia which has stirred up some suggestions of financial losses. Loans before the coup which landed Lenine and his accomplices in Bolshevist Bolshe-vist misrule may be set down as safe enough. No government loans have been advanced to the nresent: miatrnw. eminent in Petrograd. The Bolshevists dare not entertain the suggestion of repudiation. re-pudiation. It would mark them instantly in-stantly for measures which would tcaeh them to respect international financial obligations. Tho government to succeed the Le-nine-Trotzky regime will have this American loan to care for and the money will be repaid. That point was settled by tho Paris agreement to which Great Britain and France, also large holders of Eussian obligations, were parties. Kolchak, who seems likely to head the next and more responsible government in Russia, is bound by pledges which he will disregard at his peril. The Bolshevist outfit, it it should succeed in retaining an indefinite grip on Eussian affairs, might desire to repudiate re-pudiate Russia's external obligations. The danger attending such a procodure, however, is patent enough to make even a Lenine or a Trotzky stop long enough to decido upon another course. French investments in Turkey were 'estimated last March at 1,S00,000,000 francs ($360,000,000) of government loans or those guaranteed by government, govern-ment, and 900,000,000 francs ($180,-000,000) ($180,-000,000) of other securities. Inventories Inven-tories of French investments in Russia nnd Rumania are not yet complete, but in the case of Russia these are estimated esti-mated at about 2,000,000,000 francs placed in private enterprises, and 11,-000,000,000 11,-000,000,000 or 15,000,000,000 francs (2,S0O,OO0,O0O or $.1,000,000,000) of state or state-guaranteed loans. |
