The Chancellor of the Exchequer made an interesting statement in
the House on Monday with regard to the War Loan. The number of applications was about 39,800, and the total amount applied for was £335,500,000, so that, roughly speaking, the loan was subscribed for eleven times over. The Chancellor of the Exchequer went on to say that the number of applications from £100 to £1,000, both inclusive, was 30,800, or more than three-quarters of the whole ; from £1,100 to £100,000, it was 8,630; and from £100,000 to £1,000,000, 344. The largest application was for £10,000,000, and the system of allotment adopted was that large applicants (i.e., for £10,000 and upwards) should receive 6 per cent. ; while applicants for lesser sums would receive allotments varying from 6 per cent. to an allotment in full for as many of the smallest as could be arranged. He was unable to say how much of the total had been applied for from abroad. The result of the floating of the War Loan may have disappointed those who prophesied it would be subscribed for twenty times over, but, on the other hand, it has equally falsified the gloomy vaticinations of those pessimists who actually declared that, as the great financiers were left out in the cold, the Govern- ment would have the greatest difficulty in getting the amount at all.
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