Now when first mankind began to experiment with money and credit the lot of the debtor was an intolerable one. He might become the slave of his creditor, he might be subjected to imprisonment and frightful punishments. But it was early discovered that it was not to the general advantage, it was not even to the advantage of the creditor, to drive the debtor to despair. Processes of bankruptcy were devised to clear him up, get what was possible from him and then release him to a fresh start and hope. But we have not yet extended the same leniency to national bankruptcy because national insolvencies have been rare. And so we have whole nations in Europe so loaded with debts and punitive charges that every worker, every business man, will be under his share in this burden from the cradle to the grave. He will be a debt serf to the domestic or foreign creditor and all his enterprises will be weighed and discouraged by this obligation. Debt is one immense and universal discouragement now throughout all Europe. But even that might not prevent the recovery of Europe. There is yet another and profounder evil in operation to prevent people “getting to work” to reconstruct their shattered economic life. That is the increasing failure of money to do its work. Europe cannot get to work, cannot get things going again, because over a large part of the world the medium of exchange has become untrustworthy and unusable. That is the immediate thing that is destroying civilization in the Old World. We have to remember that our whole economic order is based on money. We do not know any way of working a big business, a manufactory, a large farm, a mine, except by money payments. Payment in kind, barter and the like are ancient and clumsy expedients; you cannot imagine a great city like New York getting along with its industrial and business life on any such clumsy basis. Every modern city, London, Paris, Berlin, is built on a money basis and will collapse into utter ruin, as Petersburg has already collapsed, if money fails. But over large and increasing areas of Europe money is now of such fluctuating value, its purchasing power is so uncertain, that men will neither work for it, nor attempt to save it, nor make any monetary bargains ahead. Such a thing has never occurred to anything like the same extent in all history, and it is killing business enterprise altogether and throwing whole masses of working people out of employment.