It was the unprecedented scale of this practice during the war that shocked contemporaries. Prior to the war the country's real expenditures were 17 percent of nominal GDP; they shot up to 40 percent in 1918 (Ciocca 2007, 172). While private consumption grew by 6 percent from 1913 to 1918, the numbers for public consumption were unheard of: rising by almost 500 percent.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 131