iving unemployment allowances in one form or another, and were being
paid in the main by a constant inflation of currency. In Germany there
is the added deterrent to labor and to capital (in so far as the
Reparation terms are taken literally), that anything, which they may
produce beyond the barest level of subsistence, will for years to come
be taken away from them.

Such definite data as we possess do not add much, perhaps, to the
general picture of decay. But I will remind the reader of one or two of
them. The coal production of Europe as a whole is estimated to have
fallen off by 30 per cent; and upon coal the greater part of the
industries of Europe and the whole of her transport system depend.
Whereas before the war Germany produced 85 per cent of the total food
consumed by her inhabitants, the productivity of the soil is now
diminished by 40 per cent and the effective quality of the live-stock by
55 per cent.[145] Of the European countries which formerly possessed a
large exportable surplus, Russia, as much by reason of deficient
transport as of diminished output, may herself starve. Hungary, apart
from her other troubles, has been pillaged by the Romanians immediately
after harvest. Austria will have consumed the whole of her own harvest
for 1919 before the end of the calendar year. The figures are almost too
overwhelming to carry conviction to our minds; if they were not quite so
bad, our effective belief in them might be stronger.

But even when coal can be got and grain harvested, the breakdown of the
European railway system prevents their carriage; and even when goods can
be manufactured, the breakdown of the European currency system prevents
their sale. I have already described the losses, by war and under the
Armistice surrenders, to the transport system of Germany. But even so,
Germany's position, taking account of her power of replacement by
manufacture, is probably not so serious as that of some of her
neighbors. In Russia (about which, however, we have very little exact or
accurate information) the condition of the rolling-stock is believed to
be altogether desperate, and one of the most fundamental factors in her
existing economic disorder. And in Poland, Roumania, and Hungary the
position is not much better. Yet modern industrial life essentially
depends on efficient transport facilities, and the population which
secured its livelihood by these means cannot continue to live without
them. The breakdo