cannot meet their promises to pay. Nor is this the worst. The war experience taught European government officials that it was possible to make money and pay debts with the aid of printing presses. The rapid increase in prices, and the unwillingness of the owning classes to pay for the war by means of a capital levy, placed the governments in a position where the ordinary expenses, plus the costs of the war, the interest on the war bonds, the costs of reparations and other extraordinary expenses amounted to far more than the total government revenue. As lately as 1920, all of the European belligerents, with the exception of Great Britain, all of the European neutrals, except Sweden, and all of the other principal countries of the world except Peru and the United States, reported expenditures in excess of receipts. The deficit for Austria amounted to 38 per cent of its expenditures. In other principal countries the ratio of deficit to expenditure was: Belgium 69 per cent France 57 " " Germany 46 " " Italy 21 " " Japan 17 " " ("Our Eleven Billions," p. 40-41). These events led inevitably to a demoralization of the foreign exchange market, which reflects the measure of confidence felt by the business men of one community in the promises to pay made by the government of another community. The exchange values of the non-warring countries remained generally near to par during the entire war and post war period. Japanese exchange fluctuated very little; British pounds, which up to the time of the war were recognized the world over as the standard of value, fell to about three fifths of their par value as expressed in dollars; the French franc and the Italian lira fell to a quarter of their par values, while the Russian ruble, the German mark, the Austrian and the Polish crowns fell to less than one-tenth of one per cent of par. In addition to the serious depreciation of these various currencies, their values fluctuated from day to day and hour to hour, making business transactions difficult or impossible.