than it brings with it some additional proof of the impracticability of carrying on the war without the aids you were directed to solicit. As an honest and candid man, as a man whose all depends on the final and happy termination of the present contest, I assert that without a foreign loan, our present force, which is but the remnant of an army, cannot be kept together this campaign, much less will it be increased and in readiness for another."

2

This was all too true. When Laurens arrived in Boston with 2,500,000 livres in cash, it was a most seasonable gift, to state the matter mildly; for it is hard to say how, without it, it would have been possible for Washington to conduct successfully his final and decisive expedition to the South. Even as it was, Rochambeau had to send Morris $20,000 in gold from the French Military Chest, at one juncture, in order to allay dissatisfaction in the illy clad, under-fed, and unpaid Continental ranks. Such significant incidents could be multiplied almost without limit. The Colonial fiscal situation from first to last was nothing short of uninterruptedly desperate. Whether in Paris where poor, distraught Franklin continually faced drafts drawn upon him, in sheer abandon, by the Continental Congress, and where only Vergennes repeatedly stood between this staunch old American patriot-philosopher and Writings of Washington, by Sparks, Vol. VIII, p. 5.

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2 France in the American Revolution, by Perkins, p. 335.

bankruptcy; or whether in America where the scandal of long past-due army pay rolls repeatedly threatened to smother even the warmest patriot devotions; it was as Hamilton flatly confessed in his Newbridge letter either France helped or "we sink."

France was the only country where the Colonies could get money. Nothing, after one initial, indirect loan, could be obtained from Spain whom Vergennes constantly but futilely sought to join the Franco-American alliance. The Dutch, though secretly favoring the Colonies and finally broaching negotiations for a commercial treaty similar to that already existing with France, would not lend a guilder to the United States except as Louis XVI "endorsed the note.”1 Frederick the Great, though wishing them well, would not yield so much as a single groschen. No other European country would risk a penny in aid of the Colonies or discount their promises to pay at any price. In terms of hard money, our Ministers were friendless throughout the world except in one life-saving spot-Paris. It is difficult to conjure a successful outcome for the American Revolution if the French capitol and Court had been similarly deaf.

An effort to specify the exact amount involved in direct French loans and less direct French "subsidies"-including those originally handled by "Hortalez et Cie"-always invites à dispute. 1 France in the American Revolution, by Perkins, p. 333.

The surest authority would seem to be the Treasury Department at Washington. From this source has issued an official memorandum' which shows four loans aggregating 35,000,000 livresthe American equivalent is $6,352,500-and four "subsidies" aggregating 11,000,000 livres, or $1,815,000. The same memorandum shows the detail of complete re-payment, including interest; and refers to Bayley's History of National Loans of the United States which declares that the latter settlements included an over-payment of 1,426,787 livres, or about $250,000, to the heirs of Beaumarchais. "We paid and we paid in full: there were no gifts in the nature of loans which were not taken care of before the final adjustment of the obligation," declared Senator William E. Borah, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in the course of a Senate speech on the subject of war debts, January 22, 1925. The fact that we funded and paid our debts in those difficult and dangerous yesterdays, thanks to the uncompromising fiscal sanities of Alexander Hamilton, is to our everlasting credit. But the fact does not detract from the physical importance

1 Attached to Senator Borah's speech on the floor of the United States Senate, January 22, 1925, and printed in the Congressional Record, 68th Congress, Second Session.

2 In 1881, under the direction of Secretary of the Treasury Windom an exhaustive study of all these loans was made and concludes that the Beaumarchais account was over-paid in the sum here indicated.

of the loans from whence these debts originally sprang. They were incalculably essential.

So we come back to our initial inquiry. Could the Colonies have won their independence without French aid? At the time and under the circumstance No. Ultimately a Revolution, unsupported externally, might have succeeded. But the challenge of logic and the weight of available authority recommends the answer we have given. Above and beyond all tangible assistance rendered by France was the vast and inestimable value of the intangibles-the moral encouragement, the sustenance of the spirit, the stimulus of fraternity -influences which unquestionably had the authority of battles. "The generous conduct of the French monarch and nation toward this country renders every event that may effect his or their prosperity interesting to us," declared President Washington in an official message to the Senate shortly after his inauguration. Such was the truth. Hamilton's Newbridge letter expressed gratitude for the French aid that "saved us from ruin." Such was the literal fact.

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Never can the written or spoken word do adequate justice to the brave Colonials who dared unequal combat with the most powerful monarch of his time and who, in a sublimity of faith, courage, vision and devotion, wrested our institu

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Message of September, 29, 1789, transmitting official word of the death of the Dauphin, heir apparent to the French throne.

tions of freedom from the greed and tyranny of the Dark Ages. They put posterity-the beneficiaries of their heroism-in greater debt to their service and example than to any other cause or precedent possibly existent. No comparative history can dull the brilliance of their achievement. Yet the brave are invariably generous and they would be among the first to acknowledge that French arms, French money and French ships were among the decisive factors-largely indispensable factors-in the establishment of American independence at the time it was achieved.

This, then, is the background out of which this "trail of a tradition" shall wend its way down the highways of History and Time.