VIWhat Mr. Irving said was that our troops were in Siberia because American bankers and big business men had loaned enormous sums of money to the government of the Tsar, both before the war and during it; the Bolshevik government had repudiated these debts, and therefore our bankers and business men were determined to destroy it. It was not merely the amount of the money, but the precedent involved; if the government of any country could repudiate the obligations of a previous government, what would become of international loans? The creditor nations—that is to say America, Britain and France—maintained that a government debt was a lien, not against the government, but against the country and its resources. The total amount of international loans was one or two hundred billions of dollars,
