powerful instruments of victory, and if not the essential cause,
certainly not the least important among the causes which brought about
the collapse of the Central Empires.

Germany had been deeply hit by the armistice. Obliged to hand over
immediately 5,000 locomotives and 150,000 railway trucks and carriages
at the very time when she had to demobilize, during the first months
she found her traffic almost completely paralysed.

Every war brings virulent germs of revolution in the vanquished
countries. The war of 1870 gave France the impulsive manifestations of
_La Commune_ in exactly the same manner as war gave rise in Germany
during the first months after the armistice to a violent revolutionary
crisis, overcome not without difficulty and still representing a grave
menace.

Forced to surrender immediately a large quantity of live stock, to
demobilize when the best part of her railway material had gone, still
hampered by the blockade, Germany, against the interest of the Allies
themselves, has been obliged to sacrifice her exchange because, in the
absence of sufficient help, she has had to buy the most indispensable
foodstuffs in neutral countries. Her paper currency, which at the
end of 1918 amounted to twenty-two milliard marks, not excessive as
compared with that of other countries, immediately increased with a
growing crescendo till it reached, in a very short time, the figure of
eighty-eight milliards, thus rendering from the very first the payment
of indemnities in gold extremely difficult.

The most skilled men have been thrust into an absolute impossibility
of producing. To have deprived Germany of her merchant fleet, built up