The Economic Consequences of the Peace | Page 7

resources of the New World was
becoming precarious; the law of diminishing returns was at last
reasserting itself and was making it necessary year by year for Europe
to offer a greater quantity of other commodities to obtain the same
amount of bread; and Europe, therefore, could by no means afford the
disorganization of any of her principal sources of supply.
Much else might be said in an attempt to portray the economic
peculiarities of the Europe of 1914. I have selected for emphasis the
three or four greatest factors of instability,--the instability of an
excessive population dependent for its livelihood on a complicated and
artificial organization, the psychological instability of the laboring and
capitalist classes, and the instability of Europe's claim, coupled with the
completeness of her dependence, on the food supplies of the New

World.
The war had so shaken this system as to endanger the life of Europe
altogether. A great part of the Continent was sick and dying; its
population was greatly in excess of the numbers for which a livelihood
was available; its organization was destroyed, its transport system
ruptured, and its food supplies terribly impaired.
It was the task of the Peace Conference to honor engagements and to
satisfy justice; but not less to re-establish life and to heal wounds.
These tasks were dictated as much by prudence as by the magnanimity
which the wisdom of antiquity approved in victors. We will examine in
the following chapters the actual character of the Peace.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In 1913 there were 25,843 emigrants from Germany, of whom
19,124 went to the United States.
[2] The net decrease of the German population at the end of 1918 by
decline of births and excess of deaths as compared with the beginning
of 1914, is estimated at about 2,700,000.
[3] Including Poland and Finland, but excluding Siberia, Central Asia,
and the Caucasus.
[4] Sums of money mentioned in this book in terms of dollars have
been converted from pounds sterling at the rate of $5 to £1.
[5] Even since 1914 the population of the United States has increased
by seven or eight millions. As their annual consumption of wheat per
head is not less than 6 bushels, the pre-war scale of production in the
United States would only show a substantial surplus over present
domestic requirements in about one year out of five. We have been
saved for the moment by the great harvests of 1918 and 1919, which
have been called forth by Mr. Hoover's guaranteed price. But the
United States can hardly be expected to continue indefinitely to raise
by a substantial figure the cost of living in its own country, in order to

provide wheat for a Europe which cannot pay for it.

CHAPTER III
THE CONFERENCE
In
Chapters
IV. and V. I shall study in some detail the economic and financial
provisions of the Treaty of Peace with Germany. But it will be easier to
appreciate the true origin of many of these terms if we examine here
some of the personal factors which influenced their preparation. In
attempting this task, I touch, inevitably, questions of motive, on which
spectators are liable to error and are not entitled to take on themselves
the responsibilities of final judgment. Yet, if I seem in this chapter to
assume sometimes the liberties which are habitual to historians, but
which, in spite of the greater knowledge with which we speak, we
generally hesitate to assume towards contemporaries, let the reader
excuse me when he remembers how greatly, if it is to understand its
destiny, the world needs light, even if it is partial and uncertain, on the
complex struggle of human will and purpose, not yet finished, which,
concentrated in the persons of four individuals in a manner never
paralleled, made them, in the first months of 1919, the microcosm of
mankind.
In those parts of the Treaty with which I am here concerned, the lead
was taken by the French, in the sense that it was generally they who
made in the first instance the most definite and the most extreme
proposals. This was partly a matter of tactics. When the final result is
expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an
extreme position; and the French anticipated at the outset--like most
other persons--a double process of compromise, first of all to suit the
ideas of their allies and associates, and secondly in the course of the
Peace Conference proper with the Germans themselves. These tactics
were justified by the event. Clemenceau gained a reputation for

moderation with his colleagues in Council by sometimes throwing over
with an air of intellectual impartiality the more extreme proposals of
his ministers; and much went through where the American and British
critics were naturally a little ignorant