During and immediately after World War I the United States lent over $10 billion to various countries to sustain their war efforts and to provide post-war relief. The United States's insistence that these loans be repaid led to sharp disagreements with its erstwhile allies as to the nature of these loans and whether they should actually be repaid. This thesis examines the processes, and the policies upon which those processes were based, by which the United States attempted to compel the debtor nations to begin repaying their loans. The central theme of the thesis was developed largely from primary sources, including Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, diplomatic message traffic, and minutes and reports of the World War Foreign Debt Commission. Secondary sources supported the development of the economic and political context in which these events occurred as well as the perspectives of the foreign governments involved.