This is the danger against which all our resources and courage and idealism must now co-operate.
On the 13th May, 1919, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau addressed to the Peace Conference of the Allied and Associated Powers the Report of the German Economic Commission charged with the study of the effect of the conditions of Peace on the situation of the German population.

"In the course of the last two generations," they reported, "Germany has become transformed from an agricultural State to an industrial State.

So long as she was an agricultural State, Germany could feed forty million inhabitants.

As an industrial State she could insure the means of subsistence for a population of sixty-seven millions; and in 1913 the importation of foodstuffs amounted, in round figures, to twelve million tons.

Before the war a total of fifteen million persons in Germany provided for their existence by foreign trade, navigation, and the use, directly or indirectly, of foreign raw material." After rehearsing the main relevant provisions of the Peace Treaty the report continues: "After this diminution of her products, after the economic depression resulting from the loss of her colonies, her merchant fleet and her foreign investments, Germany will not he in a position to import from abroad an adequate quantity of raw material.