t be starved of
their supplies. Before the war 13,600,000 tons of Germany's coal exports
went to Austria-Hungary. Inasmuch as nearly all the coalfields of the
former Empire lie outside what is now German-Austria, the industrial
ruin of this latter state, if she cannot obtain coal from Germany, will
be complete. The case of Germany's neutral neighbors, who were formerly
supplied in part from Great Britain but in large part from Germany,
will be hardly less serious. They will go to great lengths in the
direction of making their own supplies to Germany of materials which are
essential to her, conditional on these being paid for in coal. Indeed
they are already doing so.[49] With the breakdown of money economy the
practice of international barter is becoming prevalent. Nowadays money
in Central and South-Eastern Europe is seldom a true measure of value in
exchange, and will not necessarily buy anything, with the consequence
that one country, possessing a commodity essential to the needs of
another, sells it not for cash but only against a reciprocal engagement
on the part of the latter country to furnish in return some article not
less necessary to the former. This is an extraordinary complication as
compared with the former almost perfect simplicity of international
trade. But in the no less extraordinary conditions of to-day's industry
it is not without advantages as a means of stimulating production. The
butter-shifts of the Ruhr[50] show how far modern Europe has
retrograded in the direction of barter, and afford a picturesque
illustration of the low economic organization to which the breakdown of
currency and free exchange between individuals and nations is quickly
leading us. But they may produce the coal where other devices would
fail.[51]

Yet if Germany can find coal for the neighboring neutrals, France and
Italy may loudly claim that in this case she can and must keep her
treaty obligations. In this there will be a great show of justice, and
it will be difficult to weigh against such claims the possible facts
that, while German miners will work for butter, there is no available
means of compelling them to get coal, the sale of which will bring in
nothing, and that if Germany has no coal to send to her neighbors she
may fail to secure imports essential to her economic existence.

If the distribution of the European coal supplies is to be a scramble in
which France is satisfied first, Italy next, and every one else