ial State. So long
as she was an agricultural State, Germany could feed forty million
inhabitants. As an industrial State she could insure the means of
subsistence for a population of sixty-seven millions; and in 1913 the
importation of foodstuffs amounted, in round figures, to twelve million
tons. Before the war a total of fifteen million persons in Germany
provided for their existence by foreign trade, navigation, and the use,
directly or indirectly, of foreign raw material." After rehearsing the
main relevant provisions of the Peace Treaty the report continues:
"After this diminution of her products, after the economic depression
resulting from the loss of her colonies, her merchant fleet and her
foreign investments, Germany will not he in a position to import from
abroad an adequate quantity of raw material. An enormous part of German
industry will, therefore, be condemned inevitably to destruction. The
need of importing foodstuffs will increase considerably at the same time
that the possibility of satisfying this demand is as greatly diminished.
In a very short time, therefore, Germany will not be in a position to
give bread and work to her numerous millions of inhabitants, who are
prevented from earning their livelihood by navigation and trade. These
persons should emigrate, but this is a material impossibility, all the
more because many countries and the most important ones will oppose any
German immigration. To put the Peace conditions into execution would
logically involve, therefore, the loss of several millions of persons in
Germany. This catastrophe would not be long in coming about, seeing that
the health of the population has been broken down during the War by the
Blockade, and during the Armistice by the aggravation of the Blockade of
famine. No help, however great, or over however long a period it were
continued, could prevent those deaths _en masse_." "We do not know, and
indeed we doubt," the report concludes, "whether the Delegates of the
Allied and. Associated Powers realize the inevitable consequences which
will take place if Germany, an industrial State, very thickly populated,
closely bound up with the economic system of the world, and under the
necessity of importing enormous quantities of raw material and
foodstuffs, suddenly finds herself pushed back to the phase of her
development, which corresponds to her economic condition and the numbers
of her population as they were half a century ago. Thos