The most favorable factor in the situation was to be found in the extent to which Central and Western Europe was being fed from the exportable surplus of Russia and Roumania.
In short, Europe's claim on the resources of the New World was becoming precarious; the law of diminishing returns was at last reasserting itself and was making it necessary year by year for Europe to offer a greater quantity of other commodities to obtain the same amount of bread; and Europe, therefore, could by no means afford the disorganization of any of her principal sources of supply.
Much else might be said in an attempt to portray the economic peculiarities of the Europe of 1914.

I have selected for emphasis the three or four greatest factors of instability,--the instability of an excessive population dependent for its livelihood on a complicated and artificial organization, the psychological instability of the laboring and capitalist classes, and the instability of Europe's claim, coupled with the completeness of her dependence, on the food supplies of the New World.
The war had so shaken this system as to endanger the life of Europe altogether.

A great part of the Continent was sick and dying; its population was greatly in excess of the numbers for which a livelihood was available; its organization was destroyed, its transport system ruptured, and its food supplies terribly impaired.
It was the task of the Peace Conference to honor engagements and to satisfy justice; but not less to re-establish life and to heal wounds.
These tasks were dictated as much by prudence as by the magnanimity which the wisdom of antiquity approved in victors.

We will examine in the following chapters the actual character of the Peace.
FOOTNOTES: [1] In 1913 there were 25,843 emigrants from Germany, of whom 19,124 went to the United States.
[2] The net decrease of the German population at the end of 1918 by decline of births and excess of deaths as compared with the beginning of 1914, is estimated at about 2,700,000.
[3] Including Poland and Finland, but excluding Siberia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.
[4] Sums of money mentioned in this book in terms of dollars have been converted from pounds sterling at the rate of $5 to L1.
[5] Even since 1914 the population of the United States has increased by seven or eight millions.

As their annual consumption of wheat per head is not less than 6 bushels, the pre-war scale of production in the United States would only show a substantial surplus over present domestic requirements in about one year out of five.