We are thus faced in Europe with the spectacle of an extraordinary weakness on the part of the great capitalist class, which has emerged from the industrial triumphs of the nineteenth century, and seemed a very few years ago our all-powerful master.  The terror and personal timidity of the individuals of this class is now so great, their confidence in their place in society and in their necessity to the social organism so diminished, that they are the easy victims of intimidation.  This was not so in England twenty-five years ago, any more than it is now in the United States.  Then the capitalists believed in themselves, in their value to society, in the propriety of their continued existence in the full enjoyment of their riches and the unlimited exercise of their power.  Now they tremble before every insult;—­call them pro-Germans, international financiers, or profiteers, and they will give you any ransom you choose to ask not to speak of them so harshly.  They allow themselves to be ruined and altogether undone by their own instruments, governments of their own making, and a press of which they are the proprietors.  Perhaps it is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand.  In the complexer world of Western Europe the Immanent Will may achieve its ends more subtly and bring in the revolution no less inevitably through a Klotz or a George than by the intellectualisms, too ruthless and self-conscious for us, of the bloodthirsty philosophers of Russia.

The inflationism of the currency systems of Europe has proceeded to extraordinary lengths.  The various belligerent Governments, unable, or too timid or too short-sighted to secure from loans or taxes the resources they required, have printed notes for the balance.  In Russia and Austria-Hungary this process has reached a point where for the purposes of foreign trade the currency is practically valueless.  The Polish mark can be bought for about three cents and the Austrian crown for less than two cents, but they cannot be sold at all.  The German mark is worth less than four cents on the exchanges.  In most of the other countries of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe the real position is nearly as bad.  The currency of Italy has fallen to little more than a halt of its nominal value in spite of its being still subject to some degree of regulation; French currency maintains an uncertain market; and even sterling is seriously diminished in present value and impaired in its future prospects.

But while these currencies enjoy a precarious value abroad, they have never entirely lost, not even in Russia, their purchasing power at home.  A sentiment of trust in the legal money of the State is so deeply implanted in the citizens of all countries that they cannot but believe that some day this money must recover a part at least of its former value.  To their minds it appears that value is inherent in money as such, and they do not apprehend that the real wealth,