e who sign this
Treaty will sign the death sentence of many millions of German men,
women and children."

I know of no adequate answer to these words. The indictment is at least
as true of the Austrian, as of the German, settlement. This is the
fundamental problem in front of us, before which questions of
territorial adjustment and the balance of European power are
insignificant. Some of the catastrophes of past history, which have
thrown back human progress for centuries, have been due to the reactions
following on the sudden termination, whether in the course of nature or
by the act of man, of temporarily favorable conditions which have
permitted the growth of population beyond what could be provided for
when the favorable conditions were at an end.

The significant features of the immediate situation can be grouped under
three heads: first, the absolute falling off, for the time being, in
Europe's internal productivity; second, the breakdown of transport and
exchange by means of which its products could be conveyed where they
were most wanted; and third, the inability of Europe to purchase its
usual supplies from overseas.

The decrease of productivity cannot be easily estimated, and may be the
subject of exaggeration. But the _prima facie_ evidence of it is
overwhelming, and this factor has been the main burden of Mr. Hoover's
well-considered warnings. A variety of causes have produced it;--violent
and prolonged internal disorder as in Russia and Hungary; the creation
of new governments and their inexperience in the readjustment of
economic relations, as in Poland and Czecho-Slovakia; the loss
throughout the Continent of efficient labor, through the casualties of
war or the continuance of mobilization; the falling-off in efficiency
through continued underfeeding in the Central Empires; the exhaustion of
the soil from lack of the usual applications of artificial manures
throughout the course of the war; the unsettlement of the minds of the
laboring classes on the above all (to quote Mr. Hoover), "there is a
great fundamental economic issues of their lives. But relaxation of
effort as the reflex of physical exhaustion of large sections of the
population from privation and the mental and physical strain of the
war." Many persons are for one reason or another out of employment
altogether. According to Mr. Hoover, a summary of the unemployment
bureaus in Europe in July, 1919, showed that 15,000,000 families were
rece