s,
locomotives, and other essential parts of her economic mechanism were
appropriated. Austria suffered an even worse fate, being "drawn and
quartered" in the fullest sense of the term. After stripping the
defeated enemies of all available booty, levying an indeterminate
indemnity, and dismembering the German and Austrian Empires, the Allies
established for thirty years a Reparation Commission, which is virtually
the economic dictator of Europe. Thus for a generation to come, the
economic life of the vanquished Empires will be under the active
supervision and control of the victors. Never did a farmer's wife pluck
a goose barer than the Allies plucked the Central Powers. (See the
Treaty, also "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," J. M. Keynes. New
York, Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920.)

Under the armistice terms and the Peace Treaty the Allies did to Germany
and Austria exactly what Germany and Austria would have done to France
and Great Britain had the war turned out differently. The Allied
statesmen talked much about democracy, but when their turn came they
plundered and despoiled with a practiced imperial hand. France and
Britain, as well as Germany and Austria, were capitalist Empires. The
Peace embodies the essential economic morality of capitalist
imperialism, the morality of "Eat or be eaten."

5. _The Capitalists and War_

The people and even the masters of America are inexperienced in this
international struggle. Among themselves they have experimented with
competitive industrialism on a national scale. Now, brought face to face
with the world struggle, many of them revolt against it. They deplore
the necessities that lead nations to make war on one another. They
supported the late war "to end war." They gave, suffered and sacrificed
with a keen, idealistic desire to "make the world safe for democracy."
They might as well have sought to scatter light and sunshine from a
cloudbank.

The masters of Europe, who have learned their trade in long years of
intrigue, diplomacy and war, feel no such repugnance. They play the
game. The American people are of the same race-stocks as the leading
contestants in the European struggle. They are not a whit less
ingenious, not a whit less courageous, not a whit less determined. When
practice has made them perfect they too will play the game just as well
as their European cousins and their play will count for more because of
the vast economic resources and surpluses whi