Such definite data as we possess do not add much, perhaps, to the general picture of decay.  But I will remind the reader of one or two of them.  The coal production of Europe as a whole is estimated to have fallen off by 30 per cent; and upon coal the greater part of the industries of Europe and the whole of her transport system depend.  Whereas before the war Germany produced 85 per cent of the total food consumed by her inhabitants, the productivity of the soil is now diminished by 40 per cent and the effective quality of the live-stock by 55 per cent.[145] Of the European countries which formerly possessed a large exportable surplus, Russia, as much by reason of deficient transport as of diminished output, may herself starve.  Hungary, apart from her other troubles, has been pillaged by the Romanians immediately after harvest.  Austria will have consumed the whole of her own harvest for 1919 before the end of the calendar year.  The figures are almost too overwhelming to carry conviction to our minds; if they were not quite so bad, our effective belief in them might be stronger.

But even when coal can be got and grain harvested, the breakdown of the European railway system prevents their carriage; and even when goods can be manufactured, the breakdown of the European currency system prevents their sale.  I have already described the losses, by war and under the Armistice surrenders, to the transport system of Germany.  But even so, Germany’s position, taking account of her power of replacement by manufacture, is probably not so serious as that of some of her neighbors.  In Russia (about which, however, we have very little exact or accurate information) the condition of the rolling-stock is believed to be altogether desperate, and one of the most fundamental factors in her existing economic disorder.  And in Poland, Roumania, and Hungary the position is not much better.  Yet modern industrial life essentially depends on efficient transport facilities, and the population which secured its livelihood by these means cannot continue to live without them.  The breakdown of currency, and the distrust in its purchasing value, is an aggravation of these evils which must be discussed in a little more detail in connection with foreign trade.

What then is our picture of Europe?  A country population able to support life on the fruits of its own agricultural production but without the accustomed surplus for the towns, and also (as a result of the lack of imported materials and so of variety and amount in the saleable manufactures of the towns) without the usual incentives to market food in return for other wares; an industrial population unable to keep its strength for lack of food, unable to earn a livelihood for lack of materials, and so unable to make good by imports from abroad the failure of productivity at home.  Yet, according to Mr. Hoover, “a rough estimate would indicate that the population of Europe is at least 100,000,000 greater than can be supported without imports, and must live by the production and distribution of exports.”