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power were much smaller than they would have been had not four years of war reduced the rate of real saving and of the growth of population.

My point is that the direct economic damages of war did not leave the productive resources of the world so reduced as to render economically necessary the collapse which has taken place. It is true that over large areas of continental Europe supplies of raw materials, foods, fuel, transport and agricultural tools were lacking. But the world-supplies of most of these articles were abundant, and where there was a temporary shortage, as in coal and shipping, it was soon made up by the activity of the post-war period, nearly to the pre-war level.

Had a good peace been made, with a restoration of free commercial intercourse between nations, an emergency scheme of international credit to assist the recovery of the broken nations, a reduction of armaments and a stoppage of inflation, there seems no reason for supposing that the economic ravages of war might not have been speedily repaired, so that the pre-war production might have been resumed or even enlarged. We are only too well acquainted with the coil of political and economic crimes and follies which stopped this recovery. Minor wars, social disorders, blockades, tariffs and embargoes, armaments, reparations, extravagant budgets, inflation, fluctuating exchanges, crushing taxation, low productivity of labour — have all contributed to bring about this unprecedented depression of production and consumption, in which industrial activity is only found in a large enforced sweating system for