theft and robbery. The enormous demands of the workmen rendered all economic undertakings futile. Industry and agriculture suddenly lost their expert control. Everything and everywhere leadership was in the hands of the uneducated. Within a short time, even the soundest banks and the soundest industrial undertakings failed, and agriculture suffered tremendous damage. The soil was badly looked after; no investments were made; and only robbery took place.
The crushing of trade, which became more complete from day to day, destroyed a large number of people. The complete lack of legal security destroyed all enterprise. The desire to work, which is created by the legitime desire of the individual for profit, and which incites to new inventions and great efforts, was substituted by a feeling of duty, public spirit and communistic morals. The Communists, however, were incapable of bringing about this substitution. The assiduity and care of the owner could not be replaced by communal ownership. The most careless organization predominated in nationalized concerns. Public property belonged to everybody and therefore nobody. The opposition between the various organs that controlled production, the relaxation of all discipline, the chaos of the countless "Councils," exercised a paralysing effect. The whole capital of charitable and humanitarian societies was requisitioned and wasted. The total effect of this state of affairs brought about such an impoverishment and such a reduction in production as had never occurred hitherto in so short a
