at he has done his duty as a member of
this generation, who has not helped, at least in some degree, to unify
the world's economic activities. Most particularly does this apply both
to the statesmen and other public men who are striving to rejuvenate a
dying order, and to the organizers and leaders of the new order that is
even now pressing across the threshold of the western world.

II. THE ECONOMIC MUDDLE

1. _Bankruptcy and Chaos_

World economic affairs are in a muddle. Famine has gripped Central
Europe since 1918; unemployment is rife in Japan, Argentina, Britain,
and the United States; business depression is felt in all of the
principal industrial countries; producer and consumer alike find the
world's economic machinery sadly out of gear.

There have been innumerable predictions of "better times ahead," but
among those who are closely connected with industry, there is serious
concern over the future of the present economic system, while a
formidable array of students and investigators agree with Bass and
Moulton that: "It is not at all beyond the bounds of possibility that
all of continental Europe might in the course of the next twenty-five
years, or even sooner, go the way that Russia has already gone. It would
not necessarily be through the instrumentality of Bolshevism; it might
easily go in the Austrian way." ("America and the Balance Sheet of
Europe." New York. Ronald Press. 1921. p. 138-9.)

The cause for such gloomy utterances may be found in those superficial
indications of chaos such as the breakdown of exchange and of
international trade; the severe business depression; the waste and
inefficiency of industry; the prevalence of unrest and sabotage, and the
preparations for future wars.

Traditionally, the old institutions still exist and are cherished by
those who believe that they will be rehabilitated and re-established.
But as the months succeed one another and lengthen into years, without
any evidence that "things will right themselves as soon as the war is
over," it becomes increasingly apparent, even to the conservative that
the situation is far from what they had promised themselves it would be.
Europe's day-to-day experience between 1919 and 1922 has convinced
millions that some disaster impends. For the most part, however, they
fail to realize that the "disaster" is already upon them.

The disorganization of the world's financial structure, following on the
drains of the war