on the part of the latter country to furnish in return some article not
less necessary to the former. This is an extraordinary complication as
compared with the former almost perfect simplicity of international
trade. But in the no less extraordinary conditions of to-day's industry
it is not without advantages as a means of stimulating production. The
butter-shifts of the Ruhr[50] show how far modern Europe has
retrograded in the direction of barter, and afford a picturesque
illustration of the low economic organization to which the breakdown of
currency and free exchange between individuals and nations is quickly
leading us. But they may produce the coal where other devices would
fail.[51]

Yet if Germany can find coal for the neighboring neutrals, France and
Italy may loudly claim that in this case she can and must keep her
treaty obligations. In this there will be a great show of justice, and
it will be difficult to weigh against such claims the possible facts
that, while German miners will work for butter, there is no available
means of compelling them to get coal, the sale of which will bring in
nothing, and that if Germany has no coal to send to her neighbors she
may fail to secure imports essential to her economic existence.

If the distribution of the European coal supplies is to be a scramble in
which France is satisfied first, Italy next, and every one else takes
their chance, the industrial future of Europe is black and the prospects
of revolution very good. It is a case where particular interests and
particular claims, however well founded in sentiment or in justice,
must yield to sovereign expediency. If there is any approximate truth in
Mr. Hoover's calculation that the coal output of Europe has fallen by
one-third, a situation confronts us where distribution must be effected
with even-handed impartiality in accordance with need, and no incentive