were presumably to benefit by her sacrifice. The Central Empires are, as the informed minority in all countries has been from the beginning anxiously aware, the key-group in the whole of European industry and commerce. If they must work and trade under unfavourable conditions, they also thereby automatically impose correspondingly unfavourable conditions upon the whole of Europe; and, correspondingly unfavourable conditions are thereby in turn automatically set up wherever the trade of Europe reaches—for example, in the United States. There is now no possible doubt about this, for one has but to glance at the enormous dislocations of international commerce, and the universal and profound stagnation of industry, in order to prove it to one's complete satisfaction. Germany wisely and far-sightedly made a sincere and vigourous effort to comply with the conditions of the treaty; and by so doing she has carried the rest of the world to the verge of economic collapse. The damage wrought by the war was in general of a spectacular and impressive type, and was indeed very great—no one would minimize it—but the damage, present and prospective, wrought by the treaty of peace is much greater and more far-reaching.
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