In almost every country the War has brought a sense of internal dissolution:  everywhere this disquieting phenomenon is more or less noticeable.  With the exception, perhaps, of Great Britain, whose privileged insular situation, enormous mercantile navy and flourishing trade in coal have enabled her to resume her pre-war economic existence almost entirely, no country has emerged scatheless from the War.  The rates of exchange soar daily to fantastic heights, and insuperable barriers to the commerce of European nations are being created.  People work less than they did in pre-war times, but everywhere a tendency is noticeable to consume more.  Austria, Germany, Italy, France are not different phenomena, but different manifestations and phases of the same phenomenon.

Before the War Europe, in spite of her great sub-divisions, represented a living economic whole.  To-day there are not only victors and vanquished, but currents of hate, ferments of violence, a hungering after conquests, an unscrupulous cornering of raw materials carried out brutally and almost ostentatiously in the name of the rights of victory:  a situation which renders production, let alone its development and increase, utterly impossible.

The treaty system as applied after the War has divided Europe into two distinct parts:  the losers, held under the military and economic control of the victors, are expected to produce not only enough for their own needs, but to provide a super-production in order to indemnify the winners for all the losses and damages sustained on account of the War.  The victors, bound together in what is supposed to be a permanent alliance for the protection of their common interests, are supposed to exercise a military action of oppression and control over the losers until the full payment of the indemnity.  Another part of Europe is in a state of revolutionary ferment, and the Entente Powers have, by their attitude, rather tended to aggravate than to improve the situation.

Europe can only recover her peace of mind by remembering that the War is over and done with.  Unfortunately, the treaty system not only prevents us from remembering that the War is finished, but determines a state of permanent war.

Clemenceau bluntly declared to the French Chamber that treaties were a means of continuing the War.  He was perfectly right, for war is being waged more bitterly than ever and peace is as remote as it ever was.

The problem with which modern statesmen are confronted is very simple:  can Europe continue in her decline without involving the ruin of civilization?  And is it possible to stop this process of decay without finding some form of civil symbiosis which will ensure for all men a more human mode of living?  In the affirmative case what course should we take, and is it presumable that there should be an immediate change for the better in the situation, given the national and economic interests now openly and bitterly in conflict?