In theory, of course, an army of occupation should live on the occupied country. But it soon became evident that it was quite out of the question to collect even the cost of the armies for the limited occupation of the Rhine territories from a country whose industrial life was paralysed by blockade. Moreover, the costs of the German occupation were very sensibly increased by the fact of the Russian blockade. Deprived of Russian wheat and other products, the cost of living in Western Europe was steadily rising, the social unrest was in consequence increasing, and it was vitally necessary, if something like the old European life was to be restored, that production should be restarted as rapidly as possible. We found that a blockade of Russia which cut off Russian foodstuffs from Western Europe, was also a blockade of ourselves. But the blockade, as we have seen, was not the only economic device used as a part of military pressure: the old economic nerves between Germany and her neighbours had been cut out and the creeping paralysis of Europe was spreading in every direction. There was not a belligerent State on the Continent of Europe that was solvent in the strict sense of the term--able, that is, to discharge its obligations in the gold money in which it had contracted them. All had resorted to the shifts of paper--fictitious--money, and the debacle of the exchanges was already setting in. Whence were to come the costs of the forces and armies of occupation necessitated by the policy of complete conquest of Russia and Germany at the same time? When, therefore (according to a story current at the time), President Wilson, following the announcement that France stood for the military coercion of Russia, asked each Ally in turn how many troops and how much of the cost it would provide, each replied: 'None.' It was patent, indeed, that the resources of an economically paralysed Western Europe were not adequate to this enterprise. A half-way course was adopted. Britain supplied certain counter-revolutionary generals with a very considerable quantity of surplus stores, and a few military missions; France adopted the policy of using satellite States--Poland, Rumania, and even Hungary--as her tools. The result we know. Meantime, the economic and financial situation at home (in France and Italy) was becoming desperate. France needed coal, building material, money. None of these things could be obtained from a blockaded, starving, and restless Germany. One day, doubtless, Germany will be able to pay for the armies of occupation; but it will be a Germany whose workers are fed and clothed and warmed, whose railways have adequate rolling stock, whose fields are not destitute of machines, and factories of coal and the raw materials of production. In other words, it will be a strong and organised Germany, and, if occupied by alien troops, most certainly a nationalist and hostile Germany, dangerous and difficult to watch, however much disarmed.