Most of the banking systems of the world have been developed in comparatively recent times and have been modeled more or less closely upon the practices of France, England and her colonies, or Germany. In those cases, as in Italy, where much older banks existed, the organization and methods of such banks have been adapted from time to time along lines which had been worked out in the more highly developed modern countries where banking principles had been most fully applied. Among the countries which before the war were regarded as having fairly well-established banking systems were Italy, Spain, the Scandinavian countries, and Russia - Russia's banking system being far less highly developed and much more primitive in its methods than those of other countries. Switzerland had developed a national bank entitled the Federal State Bank, as well as a series of cantonal banks, outside of which were the privately organized institutions of various kinds and which had succeeded in developing a money market there similar to that existing in France.