Why is Europe still in such a state of economic disorder? Because the confusion of moral ideas persists. In many countries nerves are still as tense as a bowstring, and the language of hatred still prevails. For some countries, as for some social groups, war has not yet ceased to be. One hears now in the countries of the victors the same arguments used as were current coin in Germany before the War and during the first phases of the War; only now and then, more as a question of habit than because they are truly felt, we hear the words justice, peace, and democracy. Why is the present state of discomfort and dissatisfaction on the increase? Because almost everywhere in Continental Europe, in the countries which have emerged from the War, the rate of production is below the rate of consumption, and many social groups, instead of producing more, plan to possess themselves with violence of the wealth produced by others. At home, the social classes, unable to resist, are threatened; abroad, the vanquished, equally unable to resist, are menaced, but in the very menace it is easy to discern the anxiety of the winners. Confusion, discomfort and dissatisfaction thus grow apace. The problem of Europe is above all a moral problem. A great step toward its solution will have been accomplished when winners and losers persuade themselves that only by a common effort can they be saved, and that the best enemy indemnity consists in peace and joint labour. Now that the enemy has lost all he possessed and threatens to make us lose the fruits of victory, one thing is above all others necessary: the resumption, not only of the language, but of the ideas of peace; During one of the last international conferences at which I was present, and over which I presided, at San Remo, after a long exchange of views with the British and French Premiers, Lloyd George and Millerand, the American journalists asked me to give them my ideas on peace: "What is the most necessary thing for the maintenance of peace?" they inquired. "One thing only," I replied, "is necessary. Europe must smile once more." Smiles have vanished from every lip; nothing has remained but hatred, menaces and nervous excitement. When Europe shall smile again she will "rediscover" her political peace ideas and will drink once more at the spring of life. Class struggles at home, in their acutest form, are like the competition of nationalism abroad: explosions of cupidity, masked by the pretext of the country's greatness. The deeply rooted economic crisis, which threatens and prepares new wars, the deeply rooted social crisis, which threatens and prepares fresh conflicts abroad, are nothing but the expression of a _status animae_ or soul condition. Statesmen are the most directly responsible for the continuation of a language of violence; they should be the first to speak the language of peace. F.S. NITTI. ACQUAFREDDA IN BASILICATA. _September_ 30, 1921.