Disarmament and the State of Europe

All Commonwealths ought to desire Peace, yet it is necessary ever to be prepared for the War; because Peace disarmed is weak, and without Reputation: Therefore the Poets feign, that Pallas the Goddess of Wisdom did always appear armed. -SIR WALTER RALEIGH; The Arts of Empire.

THE Washington Conference is about to open, with disarmament for its leading theme, and I think it may be interesting to American readers if I give them, for what it is worth, the deductions that I have drawn concerning disarmament and kindred subjects during recent travels from the Baltic to the Ægean and from the Channel to the Black Sea. These journeys have occupied me during the greater part of this year and have brought me in contact with most of the directing minds which exercise authority in the old Continent, as well as with many other people of all classes, professions, and nationalities. I write for American readers with the greater pleasure because, wherever I have been, I have found English and American opinion firmly united, with or without previous discussion or agreement, on almost every single question that distracts Europe, and I have certainly returned home with this fact as the most satisfying, if not the only satisfying, conclusion of my tour.

The Question of Disarmament

One may divide Europe, broadly speaking, into three parts: the victors, the vanquished, and the neutrals in the late war. The victors are suffering from indigestion, the vanquished from exhaustion, and the neutrals from the discomforts inherent in propinquity to sick neighbors. No people are happy; no nation loves another; and it will take years for the hates and jealousies arising out of both the war and the peace to die down. Practically speaking the victors are still dominant and the vanquished still in subjection. The victors are dominant because they are compelled, in greater or less degree, to remain armed until all the terms of the peace treaties are carried out; and this must be an affair of long years, because the reparations exacted, though not a tithe of the real cost of the damage done, have been spread over long periods of time, in order to make the payments possible. The presence of numerous Inter-Allied commissions in the conquered countries is a source of humiliation to them, but cannot be helped, as they are there in pursuance of treaties.

It is no satisfaction to the victors to remain armed, because the cost is great and every state is at its wits’ end for money. In fact, the destitution of treasuries is so marked that even the victors have to impose on their own people almost unendurable burdens, and in many cases do so with little regard for the elementary principles of economics, thus helping to prolong the crisis of which even America is sensible. But they dread that, if they do not remain armed and impose these burdens on their taxpayers, the vanquished may either recover and renew the war, or, at all events, find good pretexts for discontinuing their payments, owing to their recognition of the fact that there is no power sufficient to coerce them. In this event, certain of the victors will reckon themselves ruined.

Therefore, the first unpleasant fact to be faced is that the victors are still armed and the vanquished almost entirely disarmed; and that, though this is an intolerable state of affairs, offers no permanence, and heals no wounds, an alternative is not within sight for many years without risk of the renewal of the war, which alternative is, of all things, the one that nobody can contemplate with equanimity. ‘Peace disarmed’ would be not only ‘without reputation,’ but a signal danger.

A conference aiming at disarmament will observe that, England apart, and America having side-tracked herself in this business, the victors retain compulsory service, while the vanquished, or at least their governments, all pine for such service and are not allowed to have it. Similarly, the vast war-material of the victors remains in existence, rotting or rusting in part, perhaps, and gradually growing out of date, but still more or less fit for use; while the huge war-material of the vanquished, greater by far than anyone imagined at the Armistice of 1918, has been swept into the net. of the victors and has either been taken or destroyed. Disarmament ? Yes, it has been carried out by force, but only in the case of the conquered states.

Another cause for disquiet is the fact that practically the whole of the ablebodied population of Europe were trained soldiers in 1918, or trained organizers or providers of the needs of war, in one form or another. Therefore, if some strong compelling sentiment should make a people rise, it would only need arms for numerically strong forces to reappear as by magic, and all the long training of the war period could be dispensed with. This situation will not end for another fifteen or twenty years, when all the veterans of the war-time will be too old, or too stout, or too much immersed in their new occupations, whatever these may be, to desire, or to be able, to march and fight. The victors have seen very clearly that these veterans cannot be destroyed, but that war-material can be; and the various Inter-Allied military commissions have therefore concentrated upon material, and have shown relentless severity in insisting upon a thorough surrender of arms — not only of guns and rifles, aeroplanes and machine-guns, but of the whole machinery of military equipment, including carts and limbers, harness, and all the thousands of articles that go to make up a properly found army. It is held that this action will make the vanquished states incapable of creating modern armies, except after a long delay, which the victors will naturally exploit.

The vanquished, on their side, have naturally sought, by every available means, to escape the control of the military commissions, and, in effectives as in armament, to conceal what they are doing by more or less clever camouflage. It has not succeeded, on the whole, but there are still military organizations in excess of treaty stipulations; there are all sorts of pseudo-civilian societies, associations of old soldiers, compulsorylabor laws, and so forth, which are not indeed very formidable, but which show that the disposition endures to resuscitate military power at the first opportunity. Similarly, there is a certain amount of war-material still concealed and undelivered, especially rifles and machine-guns; but to me the wonder is that so much has been given up, and I feel confident that it would not have been had the vanquished been certain allied and associated powers that one could name.

However, there it is, and that is the present situation. But not quite all has been said; for it is the decided and wellweighed opinion of the best men in control of the military commissions that, after they withdraw from the territories of the vanquished states, it will not take more than two years for the war-material to be replaced, at all events in the case of Germany; and that in five years the whole of the vast war-material may be renewed, quite apart from contracts that may be made with neutrals, perhaps through foreigners. Therefore, the question arises whether these commissions should not be retained until all the veterans are past the fighting age; for though, by the Treaty of Versailles, it is the League of Nations that has the duty of checking future designs of an aggressive sort, the League will have difficulty in carrying out this task; and, in fact, no one believes that it can do it.

Another real difficulty is that, when we disarm a state, we practically become, in a moral sense, trustees for her internal order and external security. A country whose forces are compulsorily reduced to the vanishing-point may not be able to suppress Spartacists, Bolsheviki, or what not; may not be able to prevent bandits from crossing from their territory into another, or to keep out other peoples’ bandits; while there is the still more serious danger that the government itself may become so weak that it may lack authority, and be at the mercy of a coup d’état. This lack of authority is one of the most constant complaints of the vanquished states. It is certain also that a long-service, voluntarily enlisted army, gendarmerie, or police, offers an easier prey to intriguers than a conscripted army based on short service; for the latter constantly refreshes itself from the whole people, whence it springs, while a volunteer force has to be taken from less choice elements, and in unsettled times and territories easily becomes a sort of Prætorian Guard, or corps of Janissaries at the call of the highest bidder. In countries of peasant proprietors, it is even difficult to recruit a voluntary army at all.

These are among the problems that Washington will have to confront on the side of the recently vanquished states; but perhaps they will be surpassed in complexity when the armies of the Allies are passed in review.

It is true that England will not have much difficulty in securing a clean bill of health, because we have scrapped compulsion and all our military acts of the war period. Except for the possession of better material and equipment, and for t he acquired precedent of creating a national army based, at need, on compulsion, we are in a worse state of military destitution than we were in 1914, — which is saying a good deal, — w hereas we have much greater commitments all over the world, and a whole series of new difficulties for which, in ultimate analysis, force may be the only remedy.

But when I think of our allies, they will, I imagine, be asked to explain their position; and they may possibly be asked why, if the disarmament of their late enemies has been in such large measure accomplished, they do not themselves disarm. The retention, practically all over Europe except in the vanquished states, of compulsory military service, and of the potentially huge armies which derive from it, will not, I imagine, escape comment. The case of our allies I will, therefore, briefly state.

If we take France first, we must admit that she has the greatest, and, perhaps, — with a saving clause for Japan, — the only really great army in the world. She has a numerous, well-organized, and splendidly equipped army, much superior to her army of 1914, led by commanders of the greatest distinction, and capable, as I verily believe, of conquering Continental Europe. If a Bonaparte came into view, he would have a perfect instrument, ready to his hand, with this reservation, that — at first, at all events — Frenchmen would not march except in a good cause, and with the object and scope of an operation clearly pointed out to them. But such eventualities are, I hope, far from us. French generals do not dabble in politics, and the whole army despises them. No political generals in France survived the war-storm. No civilian could, or would wish to, repeat t heNapoleonic épopée, of which he would probably be the first, victim. But even more important is the fact that France’s population is small, and that her strength to-day, admittedly great though it be, is merely a fortuitous and perhaps temporary superiority of an army, and not one of a people firmly based on foundations of numbers, wealth, and science. France might march on Berlin, even on Moscow, and reach both with ease; but she is quit e incapable of confront ing the subsequent hostility of the world, or even of Europe, which every aggressor must expect who attempts to emulate the projects of Napoleon or Wilhelm II. We must keep our heads cool when we observe the brilliant power of France.

The maintenance of the French army at its present standard of numbers and efficiency is due to want of confidence in the future; and if France pleads this want of confidence, one must be just to her and lay the blame where it is mainly due, namely, upon the lapse of the Anglo-American guaranty. France reluctantly consented to abandon her defensive plans on the Rhine because America, and England if America ratified the agreement, were to give France a guaranty against German aggression in the future. Two years have passed, and America has not ratified that undertaking. Consequently our adhesion falls to the ground, although our Parliament accepted the liability under the conditions named. Very likely we on this side of the water were very great, fools, and curiously illinformed of the real stateof public opinion in America, when we signed that conditional guaranty. That remark applies to our Government, if the cap fits them. It depends upon whether our former Ambassador at Washington warned the Government that the American Senate might not second the guaranty of President Wilson. I do not know whether our Ambassador gave a warning or not. But the public in England and France certainly never had the glimmer of a suspicion that a guaranty signed by a President of the United States and countersigned by a Secretary of State, in a vital matter affecting the safety of France and the future peace of Europe, would not be honored in America.

It is impossible not to attribute a very large share of France’s want of confidence in the future to the above cause, and a very large share of Europe’s unrest to France’s want of confidence. Over and over again I have been told by French statesmen and generals that France would never have taken the unrelenting course that she has taken toward Germany had the Anglo-American guaranty stood. Over and over again I have been assured by representatives of all the allied and associated powers that Germany would never have dared to confront that combination, and that, secured by the guaranty, France would, and could safely, have disarmed. The fact that none of these things happened is the main cause of the sanctions, the Upper Silesian trouble, the reparation wrangles, and most of the resulting unrest that has followed throughout Europe, which seems to take its cue from the barometer of Franco-German relations. I am not blaming America in the least. Our own long-established practice, to keep out of continental entanglements when we can, is as deeply rooted in principle as that of the United States, to steer clear of European commitments. The difference between us is merely the difference between the breadth of the Channel and the breadth of the Atlantic. By that much our policy differs from yours; but it is a difference of degree, and not of kind. But for all that, when one observes, as every traveler through Europe must observe daily, the truly appalling results that have followed from this failure, misconception, desertion, or whatever one should term it, one stands aghast at the consequences, and laments the little wisdom with which the world is governed.

France has no definite guaranty now that any state but Belgium, and perhaps Poland, will support her when Germany feels strong enough to act; and in the sheer desperation of self-défense, has thought it necessary to inflict upon her neighbor one humiliation after another, in order to make her, and keep her, weak. The policy of broad and genial tolerance, which would have so well become a country with France’s generous traditions, she could not follow, for with her forty millions there were over against her seventy million Germans, with a far higher natality; and France saw no salvation except in the rigid exaction of all her treaty rights, so that Germany, for a great number of years hence, might be inhibited from even dreaming of revenge. But when one thinks of the dry-powder régime under which France has been living for so long, and of all the terrible injuries inflicted on her by Germany in the past, one can understand, and tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. If France declares at Washington that nothing tangible except her army stands between the world and the renewal of the war by Germany, I do not know how she can be gainsaid. In the circumstances, it is the truth. I even think that we English and Americans, having left to France the largest share of the war, must feel a tinge of shame at leaving also to her the main burden of enforcing the peace, with all the obloquy that follows.

Italy will plead that she has greatly reduced her army and diminished the service periods. She can say with justice that her policy has been conciliatory, and that she has shunned adventures. But she can also show that the Anschluss movement in Austria has underlined the danger of Austria joining Germany, and she can point out that such an act would bring Germany down to her borders. Yugoslavia can urge that both Hungary and Bulgaria are uneasy neighbors; Czechoslovakia, that she is liable to be stifled by the Germans round her, and has Austria and Hungary to fear. Rumania can point to dangers from three neighbors, and, above all, from the Soviet armies upon the Dniester, and from the bulk of the Bolshevist reserves not far away. Belgium has too complete a case to bring up from 1914, for anyone to find fault with her for abandoning her neutrality and reorganizing her army on more modern lines; while Poland can say that she has recently saved Europe from the Reds by her military exertions. Lastly, there is Greece, who can show that she went to Asia Minor at the request of the Allies, who have since let her down and given her no assistance, because she chose, in the full plentitude of popular right, to recall her King.

Two states of unequal importance and discordant character will stand almost wholly beyond the influence of ihe Washington Conference. These are Russia and Turkey. The picture that we make of both is not a pleasant one; but in reference to armaments they cannot be excluded, because the existence of their armed forces is primarily the cause of countervailing armies in the countries round them. If Poland, Rumania, and Greece are more immediately affected for the moment, it must not be forgotten how far Russia extends, or how insidiously the Turks are able to work upon Mohammedan sentiment in Asia and Africa. Nothing final in the nature of reduction in armaments can be settled until these two contumacious peoples rejoin the comity of nations. No one can say when they will. Neither seems to possess the capacity, either for evolution or for repentance.

There are also alliances, supplemented by military agreements, between certain states of Europe, which may tell against the conclusion of agreements to disarm. France has a treaty and a military agreement with Belgium, and, perhaps, understandings, at least, with other states. In the cast of Europe the Little Entente unites Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Poland in a series of alliances which Greece may possibly join; and all these states may plead, not only these understandings, but their fear of warlike neighbors, as reasons for maintaining their military strength.

For all these reasons we cannot be sure that disarmament, or reduction of armaments, so far as they relate to land forces, will have more than a succés d’estime at Washington. It is not a favorable moment to discuss this question, and it is even open to argument whether a direct attack on armaments is the best way of securing either their diminution or their abolition. I happened to take an unimportant part in the first Peace Conference at The Hague in the year 1899, when all the states of the world were not separated by the terrible antagonisms aroused by the late war. We were very well intentioned, very friendly, and set out to discover a formula for the reduction of armaments, in response to the late Tsar’s humanitarian appeal. We could not find one, though we sought, high and low for it, and a very good American delegation helped us in our search. Time has passed, and the urgency of the question may lead to the discovery of the formula for which we sought in vain; but I am not confident that it will.

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting again that very competent Belgian lawyer, M. Rolin Jacquemyns, who also was at the Peace Conference of 1899, and is now the Belgian representative on the Rhineland High Commission. We compared notes and were both convinced that the creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, which was the chef-d’œuvre of our Conference, was of more value than the League of Nations is ever likely to be. The Court still exists and has done much useful work. To it should have been submitted the Upper Silesia case. The Hague Court represents the main idea that seemed to me to be in President Harding’s mind at the time of the late presidential election in the United States; and I hoped that we were on the right track once more and were getting back to practical politics after our Geneva day-dreams. I shall retain that hope till the end.

An International Court of Arbitration, rather than a spurious form of world-government like the League, is the real remedy for most of the present troubles of the world. But I would like to see its importance magnified a hundred times by the acceptance of the principle of obligatory arbitration by all the states of the world. That condition we could not secure in 1899, because several states insisted on withdrawing from the purview of the Court all questions in which ‘honor and vital interests’ were involved. That reservation practically made the Court useless at the time when it would have been most needed. If the United States were ever great enough and wise enough to accept the principle of compulsory arbitration, I cannot name the state that would not follow her. Can any arbitral decision, even against the claims of any one of us, cause one millionth part of the ruin and loss of life and treasure of the late war? And, on the other hand, compulsory arbitration is a sure means of sterilizing armaments, since, once international arbitration becomes our settled rule in diplomacy, the use of force must end; for no state would be so foolish as to keep up expensive forces for long when there was no use for them. On these lines, and I believe on these lines only, can the design that must stand behind the assembly of the Washington Conference be carried out to its logical completion.

I suppose that we shall not hear very much of the League of Nations at Washington. It was mainly American handiwork, but America’s refusal to recognize her own child has relegated it to the political workhouse. No worldauthority can exist when the United States, Germany, and Russia have no share in it. There are League enthusiasts here, as there doubtless are in America, and we must admire the devotion with which the League works and accumulates mountains of documents and reports. But we must also admit that it makes little progress and has scant authority. Some say that the Council of the League is a mere creature of the French and British Foreign Offices. Others declare Geneva to be a focus of international intrigue. In any case, it is common ground that the League has no authority, and no force at its back except that of moral persuasion; and that it can do nothing but report, warn, or recommend. With difficulty it has at last agreed that the election of judges to an International Court of Justice shall be placed on its agenda at its second assembly, which is taking place as I write; but I do not know why this Court should be any better than, or even so good as, our Hague Court of the first Peace Conference. To take two years to begin to duplicate the machinery that we finished twenty-two years ago does not strike me as an achievement of great merit. The real practical international diplomacy of the moment, in all but American affairs, is controlled by the Supreme Council and by the Council of Ambassadors in Paris, both of which are, in effect, instruments for registering the decisions of the Allied cabinets. The League is left to its pious aspirations, and the main stream of diplomacy passes it by. Even when it has taken up a question like that of Armenia, with passionate earnestness, the only result has been that its protégé has become either Kemalist or Red; while in the matter of mandates, the United States has protested against decisions made without its approval, and the whole question is consequently hung up. Well may a French statesman have said to himself sarcastically every morning in the spring of 1919, as he rose from his bed: ‘Georges Clemenceau, you believe in the League of Nations.’

The Sorrows of Europe

In what particular manner President Harding and Mr. Hughes will change the situation for the better, we shall all learn presently; but that the old Continent of Europe is beset with immense difficulties, political, social, economic, and commercial, is manifest to a traveler In every country that he visits. I place the question of exchange first among the anxieties of Europe; and it is needless to remark how gravely British and American trade have been affected by it. It is not only the depreciation that has hit the world so hard, but the constant fluctuations, which have ruined confidence, caused every trader to think many times before he closes a deal, and involved, not only foreign merchants, but many British and American ones as well, in very severe losses. The foreigner, except in the case of a few neutrals, cannot afford to buy from us at the present rales, and consequently purchases only what he cannot produce or buy elsewhere. In many cases, foreigners refuse to pay for our goods on arrival, because the local exchange has fallen since the order was given. In some cases, notably in Rumania, the inefficiency and inadequacy of the railway service preclude the forwarding of our goods from ports when they are landed; and there the goods remain for months, on the quays, often perishing from exposure.

Is there no remedy against this deadly injury of the depreciated European exchanges? I know of none except work, thrift, retrenchment, and time. But I think that we should explore the repudiation of old currencies, the replacement of old units by new, and currency reform based on the international redistribution of gold. Sound currency stands at the base of sound trade; but as America holds most of the gold of the world, it is up to her to initiate reform.

People curse Versailles for not having stabilized exchanges at the time of the Peace Conference; but when one looks into the procedure recommended, it is usually evident that the remedy is to declare that one crown, mark, franc, dinar, or lewa, is worth five, or possibly ten. Artificial stabilization is financial quack medicine. Internat ional finance may be very clever, but apparent ly it is disarmed in presence of conditions with which it had no previous acquaintance. Some people think, seeing how the hard-working countries like Germany undersell us owing to their depreciated exchanges, that their governments promote this depreciation. I have seen no evidence of it. The fall makes it enormously more difficult for countries to pay their foreign debts; and those countries at all dependent on foreign imports naturally have to pay through the nose for them. The depreciation, or, at least, the fluctuations, may be in part accounted for by speculation and gambling, which proceed on a vast scale; but, taking the situation as a whole, the fall seems generally justified by foreign debts, by inflation, by internal exhaustion, by reduced output per man per day, by consequent failure of productivity, and by the inability of many countries to complete the reconstruction of their state machinery, without which their wealth cannot be fully exploited.

The countries doing best are those in which Labor is most moderate in the standards of wages and living it accepts, and in which governments provide cheap coal and relatively cheap food. This is Germany’s strength. She is resolutely setting to work, and all classes are accepting a standard of living and of wages far below ours and even farther below the American scale. Compare the seventeen shillings per ton for German coal at the Ruhr pitheads with the price we have to pay; and compare the fifty pounds a year of the German bank-clerk with the pay of the English or American clerk! This difference runs through all German social and industrial life, and there is, besides, a rigid elimination of waste, which is unknown with us.

The combination of the benefit from a depreciated exchange and that derived from low wages and poor living is enough to account for our difficulty in competing with German trade. In many other countries the scale of remuneration of the highest dignitaries is preposterously small. In Austria the President of the Republic draws only eighty pounds a year, and heads of departments in the Foreign Office tell me that they cannot afford a new suit of clothes. The High Court Judge in Bucharest draws sixteen pounds a month, and the lieutenant four pounds. How they manage to live at all, with prices at their present height in these countries, is one of those mysteries which I have not been able to penet rate, though we must, of course, admit that the purchasing power of the local currency in the country itself is much higher than the English or American equivalent of it would be in London or New York. A few countries have checked inflation and are bravely facing their liabilities; but in many — and Poland and Austria are the worst cases — inflation goes on, and selfishness often prevents the imposition of taxes needed for reconstruction.

Generally speaking, I regard this question of the rates of exchange as much more vital to England and America than to Continental Europe, though in one way or another all suffer from the present situation. We are really in presence of a state of chaos which injures all the world, and only the union of the world for the purpose of mending matters can improve conditions. In this matter, America might take the lead, and, by collecting the best practical exports, endeavor to formulate a solution. The Brussels Economic Conference gave us the most excellent advice upon the questions of state finance and economics; but something more is needed before we can go ahead. Unless some financial genius can discover a remedy, one must regard British and American trade with Continental Europe as almost dead for a long time to come.

Second only to the exchanges, there comes the urgent need of freeing international trade by every possible means from the very great obstacles which are at present accumulated in its path. I refer especially to passports, customhouses, tariffs, permits, and all the vast machinery for selfish national isolation which seems especially devised, not to assist trade, but to hamper it. The grand tour of Europe is no joke in these days. One’s passport becomes a formidable document. One must get a vise in advance for every country through which one passes, even if one does not propose to stop there. One must carry only a very limited amount of the local money out of each country; and in traveling across a number of states one must carry the coinage, or rather the horrible paper, of each. The trader is greatly handicapped by a system of permits, and export and import duties, and the wonder is how any trader gets a ton of goods into, or out of, any country. This arises from state control of trade, and everything shows that, whatever else the state may be, it is a failure as a merchant.

We see the system at work to kill trade in full perfection in the Succession Stat es of Austria. The old AustroHungarian Empire was favorably situated economically, because different parts of it supplied things that other parts lacked, and everything passed freely from one province to another. There was internal free trade, and the Empire was almost self-supporting. Hungary sent her wheat and her timber, Bohemia sent her coal and sugar, Styria and the other parts all their products. It was less the Austrian marriages that made Austria happy t han the very shrewd business sense which realized that certain provinces were needed to supply Austria’s deficiencies.

Now all this economically happy state of affairs has terminated. The Succession States have all closed their frontiers against Austria and against each other. Each has its own currency. cand has set to work to build up customs barriers on every side against the territories with which it once traded freely. This has injured the present Austria most, and has indeed reduced her state finance almost to extremities by compelling her to pay vast sums for wheat and coal. But before long the selfish Succession States found that, in injuring Austria, they were losing their customers and injuring themselves; so, by the natural force of circumstances, we shall in due course see a change of policy for which Austria, Hungary, and even Czechoslovakia are almost ripe.

But the big idea of Dr. Benes, the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia, to create the United States of Central Europe by a series of tariff agreements between half a dozen states in this part of the world, may take long to be carried out; for in some quarters the tendency is still to pile on duties, chiefly in order to collect money, but also to protect home industries.

The broad fact remains that international trade is grievously hampered, and that it should be our object to free it from its fetters, both for our own sakes and for the sake of these small countries which are busy strangling each other to no possible benefit for themselves. I believe that the quickest and most drastic cure for the evils of Europe, and failing currency and exchange reform, would be a year of completely free trade, with no tariffs at all, inward or outward; but one must confess that the nations concerned, not to speak of others, have not yet reached such a state of grace as to accept a remedy of so novel and so violent a kind. The tendencies, on the whole, are the other way. Even on the international rivers, the smaller riverain states arc most tenacious of what they call their rights, and claim powers which the régime of international law does not allow them.

All governments want money, whethAnother, change, which we in England, at all events, watch with some anxiety, is the agrarian policy, which has taken the form, in several states, of distributing the land among the peasants. It may have been, and it was in some cases, a political necessity, and may have prevented an agrarian revolution; but the effect which it will have upon the export of cereals is of considerable interest to the world. The great estates are being broken up and replaced by small holdings, which usually run from some three acres in Alpine regions up to twenty acres in average arable land, rising again to six hundred acres at most for the old proprietors. There is no universal scale, nor even the same scale in all the provinces of each separate country; but the general effect is to replace large landed properties by small ones, with various scales of compensation — all very low — to the former landlords. Most of these laws were passed in the first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm after the war. In some cases they have been widely applied, in some partially, and in others scarcely at all. But all the laws stand, and it is the general belief that the exportable surplus of cereals, and especially of wheat, will diminish with a generalized peasant-proprietorship. The tendency of the small holder is to grow patchy crops, primarily for his own food and that of his family; and there will not be the capital necessary for rich manuring, for providing modern agricultural machinery, or for purchasing high-class stock. On the other hand, a plurality of landowners means more stable political conditions, and may lead, some hope, to increased production, owing to the personal interest of each small farmer in his lander to administer the state or to reward political friends. Therefore the rule is to tax everybody and everything, but especially the foreigner. The export duty on Rumanian oil is a typical case; for, if it hits directly the foreign capital invested in this industry, it also injures a source of local wealth, and gives a subsidy to other states which supply oil. The idea of a fixed export tax, laid on regardless of worldprices and falling-values, is one which must have originated in a lunatic asylum. In other places we discover a consortium, or government trading-machine, which supplies posts for political adherents, usually ignorant of trade needs and practices; and it need scarcely be said that it trades badly, and imposes on the produce of the country quite needless losses, often failing to find markets at all. In short, there is every grade of incompetence to be found as we pursue our inquiry; while, of course, the immense loss and damage of the war has thrown numerous states into a disorganized condition and communications have particularly suffered.

Some attempts have been made by the proletariat, notably in North Italy, to seize factories and to exploit them for the exclusive benefit of the workers. These attempts have failed, because the new men in possession found themselves quite incapable of managing the administrative part of the work, the contracts, and the sales. They, therefore, in many cases, invited the old proprietors and managers to return, while the bourgeois parties created the fascisti in Italy, and took other measures to defend themselves.

In general, the tyranny, the excesses, and the fearful results of the Russian Revolution, have sunk deeply into the minds of the workers in Europe. If Bolshevism had been specially designed to expose the futility and uneconomic absurdity of the theories of Karl Marx, it could not have more appropriately carried out its mission than it has done during the last four years. The error, and the tragedy of the error, have been denounced to the workers of Europe by many missions to Russia composed of men of extreme views. With few exceptions these men have confessed themselves horror-stricken by the conditions they have found; and though Communism is not everywhere dead in Europe, there has been a powerful reaction against the disruptive theories of a few years ago. The affair really came to a head in the Bolshevist invasion of Poland; and if the failure of that attack did not convince Lenin and his dupes of the futility of their theories, it conveyed to them, at all events, a sense of their weakness against even partially trained troops; and since then Bolshevism has been steadily losing ground in countries other than Russia. There are some communistic centres in Europe where outbreaks of this disease may recur, but I do not know the country in Europe which has any serious fear now that its people can be stampeded by the fanatics of Moscow. The experiences of Berlin and Munich, Vienna and Budapest, have sufficed. The country has one hold over the towns: it can always starve them.

The disruption of four great historic empires, and the substitution for them of various forms of democratic rule, have naturally caused immense disturbance in the political atmosphere, and the political weather is most uncertain. Bulgaria keeps her dynasty, and Austria thinks more of joining Germany than of recalling the Hapsburgs; but Hungary is monarchical, and would have a king to-morrow if she dared; while a large and influential part of the German population remains in principle monarchical, and desires to revert to that form of government. The German Empire acquired its former great position under a kaiser, and every German is regretful of the past.

The present government of Dr. Wirth and the personality of this honest Swabian, are very highly esteemed by the Allied and Associated diplomatic bodies in Berlin. Chancellor Wirth is endeavoring to do his duty by the Treaty of Versailles, as well as by his own people. But he has to call upon the German people to double the state revenue in order to pay reparations; and though I am convinced that he can do it if he meets with proper support, politics in Germany arc very bitter, and the parties of reaction stick at nothing. All the old reactionary forces are still in existence. The Army, the Church, and the Universities combine with the landlords and the great industrial magnates to make things difficult for a government which has no great prestige for want of past successes, and has the invidious task of sending the hat round for the Allies. The mass of the Left, and even some of the intermediate parties, have at present rallied to the Chancellor’s support; and if street demonstrations count for much, the majority of the voters are for him. The Allies have abolished the Rhine customs as a tribute to him; but, owing to the opposition of France, have not withdrawn from Düsseldorf, Ruhrort, and Duisburg, as Dr. Wirth has very earnestly pleaded that they should.

The Right parties in Germany complain that the Government lacks authority, cannot represent the country with the old distinction, and is subservient to the Allies. Most of the notable leaders of the Imperialist party are getting on in years, and they probably feel that time is on the side of German Republicanism. In a few years most of the old officers will have settled down to new occupations and may retain little more than a sentimental attachment to Kaiserism. The Right probably feel that they cannot afford to wait, and they count, with some reason, upon the national pride, which revolts against the peace and the surrender to the Allied ultimatum of last May. But it seems to be the prescriptive right of this party to make colossal blunders, and the assassination of Erzberger, almost condoned as it was by many Opposition newspapers, is the last on the list.

No one can safely predict the future of German politics, which depend on events that cannot be foreseen; but that the character of the new Chancellor and the policy of his Government offer the best ascertainable chance for the gradual pacification, not only of Germany, but of Europe, will not be disputed by the closest observers of European politics.

For the reasons stated in the earlier part of this article, I do not think that very much can be expected from the meeting at Washington in the way of reduction of land forces. With respect to navies it is different, because there are only three great navies that count, and none of these is specially concerned in the enforcement of the terms of peace upon our late enemies, who have no navies at all. It is, therefore, merely a question of agreeing to a mutual stand-st ill in naval armaments; and this question, it would seem, should present no insuperable difficulties.

But I cannot think that such an important conference will break up without suggesting a remedy for the ills which I have briefly described. Armaments are symptoms of a political disease, but are not the disease itself. The real diseases of the world are unstable exchanges, unsound currencies, hampered trade, and the false nationalism which shuns obligatory arbitration. Cure these diseases and armaments cure themselves.