The underlying cause is plain enough. The economic distress that
the world suffers now is the inevitable consequence of the war.
Everybody knows that. But where the people differ is in regard to
what is going to happen next, and what we must do about it. Here
opinion takes a variety of forms. Some people blame it on the German
mark: by permitting their mark to fall, the Germans, it is claimed,
are taking away all the business from England; the fall of the
mark, by allowing the Germans to work harder and eat less than the
English, is threatening to drive the English out of house and home:
if the mark goes on falling still further the Germans will thereby
outdo us also in music, literature and in religion. What has got
to be done, therefore, is to force the Germans to lift the mark up
again, and make them pay up their indemnity.

Another more popular school of thought holds to an entirely contrary
opinion. The whole trouble, they say, comes from the sad
collapse of Germany. These unhappy people, having been too busy
for four years in destroying valuable property in France and Belgium
to pay attention to their home affairs, now find themselves collapsed:
it is our first duty to pick them up again. The English should
therefore take all the money they can find and give it to the
Germans. By this means German trade and industry will revive to
such an extent that the port of Hamburg will be its old bright self
again and German waiters will reappear in the London hotels. After
that everything will be all right.

Speaking with all the modesty of an outsider and a transient visitor,
I give it as my opinion that the trouble is elsewhere. The danger of
industrial collapse in England does not spring from what is happening
in Germany but from what is happening in England itself. England,