ABSTRACT
The industrial progress of Germany was very largely conditioned by the place which she could obtain in the world's markets. In the methods adopted for financing foreign trade and in the incidental services rendered to exporters and importers, the German banks and their subsidiaries followed very closely the practices which were already general and had largely been perfected by English bankers. With regard to the export trade, financial assistance was given mainly by way of advances to bridge over the interval between the shipment of goods and the arrival of the purchaser's remittance. At the outbreak of the War Germany came third amongst the nations of the world, following England and France, in respect of the amount of capital invested abroad. The German capital had assisted in the construction of foreign railways in the previous decade, the first examples of German banks taking a part in the initiation of enterprises of this kind occurred at the beginning of the seventies.
