To provide collateral, the UK Treasury organized a forced purchase scheme for private holdings of first-class North American and Latin American securities, which were exchanged for domestic UK government bonds. The foreign assets, once in the hands of the UK Treasury, were used to provide security for billions of dollars’ worth of Entente borrowing from Wall Street. The liabilities that the UK Treasury incurred in America were counterbalanced in Britain’s national balance sheet by vast new claims on the governments of Russia and France.
