The war found the Scandinavians with a comparatively large merchant fleet, not merely of steam vessels, but of sailing craft. Only those who were in the North Sea at that time could realise this fact, and as the years went on it became still more emphasised. For they were able to sell their agricultural produce to Germany for high prices, and they sold, also at a high rate, large supplies of food and of timber to Great Britain. The result was that the enormous demand for merchant ships brought great wealth to these Northmen. They placed a large number of orders with British shipbuilding firms prior to peace, and in one area alone these orders amounted to 450,000 tons. But then came the slump, ships were not wanted, because trade became bad, many shipowners were soon in financial straits and merchant captains found themselves without employment. The result is, that notwithstanding the boom, they owned in June 1921 only 7·7 as against 8·7 in June 1914 of the world’s sea-going steam tonnage. On the other hand, they have shown considerable enterprise in evolving the ocean-going motor ship. But whereas the Baltic meant so much to their shipping, the revolutionary upheavals in Russia and Germany have thoroughly disorganised that most important section of their trade. To take one instance alone, before the war, and even during those years, Sweden used to export in small steamships large quantities of iron ore to Germany, but now these exports have considerably diminished. Nevertheless, the possession of these Scandinavian merchant fleets, consisting as they do principally of small rather than big ships, is a strong factor to be considered in the future. To-day the French Mercantile Marine is of the same strength as Japan, owing to the last-mentioned country having gone ahead rather than the former having gone astern. The acquisition of a number of ex-German liners after the Armistice was something of a windfall, though it was a long time before some of the big craft were requisitioned. The Messageries Maritimes, for example, took over from the French Government the _Lucie Woermann_ (4836 tons) and several bigger ships. But as an influence in the shipping world, France is very different from what she was during the time of Louis XIV and after. The naval architects and shipbuilders in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were in many cases as good, and frequently better than, those of England or Holland or Spain. But this supremacy had long since left them by the time the steamship became prevalent.