s
of Central and Eastern Europe are held in a dreadful torpor. The lately
gathered harvest keeps off the worst privations, and Peace has been
declared at Paris. But winter approaches. Men will have nothing to look
forward to or to nourish hopes on. There will be little fuel to moderate
the rigors of the season or to comfort the starved bodies of the
town-dwellers.

But who can say how much is endurable, or in what direction men will
seek at last to escape from their misfortunes?

FOOTNOTES:

[145] Professor Starling's _Report on Food Conditions in
Germany_. (Cmd. 280.)

[146] Including the _Darlehenskassenscheine_ somewhat more.

[147] Similarly in Austria prices ought to be between twenty
and thirty times their former level.

[148] One of the moat striking and symptomatic difficulties
which faced the Allied authorities in their administration of the
occupied areas of Germany during the Armistice arose out of the fact
that even when they brought food into the country the inhabitants could
not afford to pay its cost price.

[149] Theoretically an unduly low level of home prices should
stimulate exports and so cure itself. But in Germany, and still more in
Poland and Austria, there is little or nothing to export. There must be
imports _before_ there can be exports.

[150] Allowing for the diminished value of gold, the exchange
value of the franc should be less than 40 per cent of its previous
value, instead of the actual figure of about 60 per cent, if the fall
were proportional to the increase in the volume of the currency.

[151] How very far from equilibrium France's international
exchange now is can be seen from the following table:

Excess of
Monthly Imports Exports Imports
Average $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

1913 140,355 114,670 25,685
1914 106,705 81,145 25,560
1918 331,915 69,055 262,860
Jan.-Mar. 1919 387,140 66,670 320,470
Apr.-June 1919 421,410 83,895 337,515
July 1919 467,565 123,675 343,890

These figures have been converted, at approximately par rates, but this
is roughly compensated by the fact that the trade of 1918 and 1919 has
been valued at 1917 official rates. French imports cannot possibly
continue at anything approaching these figures, and the semblance of
prosp