Of course, if the economic policy of the Treaty is ever realised and we artificially stimulate the production of Germany and strangle its consumption, we shall, if the country recovers, and is resigned to work under such conditions, run a real danger of a dumping of a most dangerous character. The semi-servile employment of the Germans could under such conditions be used to fight the efforts of our workmen for economic freedom; just as the semi-servile enlistment of Hessians and Hanoverians was used to fight the efforts of our American colonies for political freedom. But this policy, if policy it is, depends on whether and when Germany is sufficiently recovered to work again. When we measure the exhaustion of Germany on the one side against the enormity of its burdens on the other, it is difficult to believe that it can ever recover in the near future. German economic life has had to endure three crushing blows--the war, the revolution, and the peace. It was financially ruined by the war, industrially ruined by the revolution, and economically ruined by the peace terms. Little need be said as to the financial ruin caused by the war. In its general lines it is the same as that suffered by all belligerent peoples; in its details it would require a book to itself. War losses reduced the industrial, agricultural, and mental producing power of the male population by about a fifth, which may well be doubled to cover the reduced productivity of the remainder due to physical anæmia and political agitation. The productivity of the soil was reduced by over a quarter, owing to want of labour and fertilisers. Livestock was reduced by two-thirds. Deadstock, including industrial plant, railway rolling stock, shipping, buildings, etc., was all much more reduced in value than with us, owing to the greater material concentration of Germany on its war effort. The State was bankrupt even in the opinion of the most optimistic. But all this was remediable, even rapidly remediable, as soon as the people recovered their vitality. And then came the armistice which for nine months blockaded and bled the patient. If one were to enquire which of the particular bleedings most contributed to his relapse into his present condition of coma one would choose the taking away of the 5,000 locomotives. The tie up of internal transportation that followed did more than anything else to injure the economic vitality of the country.