The Economic Consequences of the Peace | Page 4

present in a less degree, the annual excess of births over deaths
being about half a million, out of which, however, there was an annual
emigration of some quarter of a million persons.
To understand the present situation, we must apprehend with vividness
what an extraordinary center of population the development of the
Germanic system had enabled Central Europe to become. Before the
war the population of Germany and Austria-Hungary together not only
substantially exceeded that of the United States, but was about equal to
that of the whole of North America. In these numbers, situated within a
compact territory, lay the military strength of the Central Powers. But
these same numbers--for even the war has not appreciably diminished
them[2]--if deprived of the means of life, remain a hardly less danger to
European order.
European Russia increased her population in a degree even greater than
Germany--from less than 100,000,000 in 1890 to about 150,000,000 at
the outbreak of war;[3] and in the year immediately preceding 1914 the
excess of births over deaths in Russia as a whole was at the prodigious
rate of two millions per annum. This inordinate growth in the
population of Russia, which has not been widely noticed in England,
has been nevertheless one of the most significant facts of recent years.
The great events of history are often due to secular changes in the
growth of population and other fundamental economic causes, which,
escaping by their gradual character the notice of contemporary
observers, are attributed to the follies of statesmen or the fanaticism of
atheists. Thus the extraordinary occurrences of the past two years in
Russia, that vast upheaval of Society, which has overturned what
seemed most stable--religion, the basis of property, the ownership of

land, as well as forms of government and the hierarchy of classes--may
owe more to the deep influences of expanding numbers than to Lenin
or to Nicholas; and the disruptive powers of excessive national
fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of
convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.
II. Organization The delicate organization by which these peoples lived
depended partly on factors internal to the system.
The interference of frontiers and of tariffs was reduced to a minimum,
and not far short of three hundred millions of people lived within the
three Empires of Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. The various
currencies, which were all maintained on a stable basis in relation to
gold and to one another, facilitated the easy flow of capital and of trade
to an extent the full value of which we only realize now, when we are
deprived of its advantages. Over this great area there was an almost
absolute security of property and of person.
These factors of order, security, and uniformity, which Europe had
never before enjoyed over so wide and populous a territory or for so
long a period, prepared the way for the organization of that vast
mechanism of transport, coal distribution, and foreign trade which
made possible an industrial order of life in the dense urban centers of
new population. This is too well known to require detailed
substantiation with figures. But it may be illustrated by the figures for
coal, which has been the key to the industrial growth of Central Europe
hardly less than of England; the output of German coal grew from
30,000,000 tons in 1871 to 70,000,000 tons in 1890, 110,000,000 tons
in 1900, and 190,000,000 tons in 1913.
Round Germany as a central support the rest of the European economic
system grouped itself, and on the prosperity and enterprise of Germany
the prosperity of the rest of the Continent mainly depended. The
increasing pace of Germany gave her neighbors an outlet for their
products, in exchange for which the enterprise of the German merchant
supplied them with their chief requirements at a low price.
The statistics of the economic interdependence of Germany and her

neighbors are overwhelming. Germany was the best customer of Russia,
Norway, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria-Hungary;
she was the second best customer of Great Britain, Sweden, and
Denmark; and the third best customer of France. She was the largest
source of supply to Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland,
Switzerland, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Roumania, and Bulgaria; and the
second largest source of supply to Great Britain, Belgium, and France.
In our own case we sent more exports to Germany than to any other
country in the world except India, and we bought more from her than
from any other country in the world except the United States.
There was no European country except those west of Germany which
did not do more than a quarter of their total trade with her; and in the
case of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Holland the proportion was far
greater.
Germany