The New York herald., 1922-05-12

by MAURICE COLRAT.
France is losing the sympathy of
every nation And il France loses the
worlds sympathy her own fate is
sealed" writes Sir George PaisE.
France does not want to lose the
the worlds sympathy is drifting from
her, such statements as that of Sir
George Paish are not little RESPONSE
BILE for it. And what strikes her most
in these statements is that confusion
is hardly TO be expected in men of Sir
Georges standing and ability.
The reconstruction of Europe has
been so much talked about that peo-
pie apparently have ceased to realize,
or never realized. what it means. Eu-
rope, no doubt. is a single economic
unit, in just the same sense as the
whole world is now a single economic
unit. None the less, il. is suffering
with variety Of ills that by no means
affect every one of it's component
parts in the same way or in the same
degree.
All Commerce Affected.
or the economic consequences OF
the war. the only one which may be
experienced practically everywhere is
the stagnation of trade, which is due
to the fact that work for more than
four years was either stopped or
turned into unproductive channels;
that wages have risen owing to the
scarcity of labor; that costs of pro-
duction have gone up and the cost of
living along with them, while savings
and investments are fast vanishing
away; money is depreciating and taxa
ton is growing more burdensome;
hence the reduced purchasing power
Of the public all round.
This is made worse by the un-
| balancing of exchange, both as regards
the exporting power of countries with
high value currency and the import
ing power OF countries with a low
value currency.
/ Another economic consequence OF
the war moro exclusively concerns
/ Europes Traditional trade currents
nAvet been broken by the territorial
rearransenents as defined by the vari-
Gus peace treaties.
! A centrifugal process took place
about the time of the armistice. be
fore any treaty was drafted--a whole
province broke away from Austria
| Hungary and is now a part of the
| new independent States, Jusp- Slavia,
Czecho-S -Slovakia and Poland. This
could not be done without swapping
the old bonds, economic as well as po-
litical, and upsetting the old connec-
tons.
Cites Case OF Poland.
Nothing illustrates the position bet
ter than the case of Poland's agricul-
tural districts, which, when under the
Russian crown, used to supply in
dustrial Getrmany with foodstuffs
while getting industrial products from
Germany: whereas the industrial dis
tricts of Poland used to get food from
Russia and export manufactured ar
ticles into Russia, the Galician district,
rich in oil, doing most Of its trade with
Austria, to which it belonged. Now,
will any of these three parts find in
| the other two markets the sources Of
supply il requires? This ii more or
!, less the problem of every European
territory that has changed hands since
the war. 1t is no doubt serious prob
lem, yet that Is no reason why treaties
should be revised and peoples denied
the right of freely disposing of them
/ selves.
The third economic consequence Of
the warts even more narrowly con-
fined. The particular stretches OF
countries which have been the scene
of the heaviest and stubbornest fight
I ing are eastern Prussia, Poland, Ga
licia. Rumania. the adjoining parts OF
RUSSIA, Serbia. the Balkans and north
eastern italy, and. last but not least,
| France and Belgium, where trench
warfare went on for practically four
years in the same spot. where towns
and villages were wiped out of exist
ence and recognition by artillery fire,
where the vegetable mold itself was
blown to dust, or buried many feet
lying under clay and chalk.
Nor is this all. Apart from the in
evitable blight of sheilire, willful and
systematic destruction was carried out
for instance. during the Gen man re-
trea. of 1917 in the Somme. where the
| very fruit trees were cut down.
:. Explains Europc's Problem.
France especially (for to the last the
Germans hoped to retain possession or
Belgium) was tho victim of sn eco
nomic war simultaneously waged ac-
cording to the plan that all coal mines.
steel works and factories whose com
petition might eventually have mur-
dered Gerfnany's commercial expan-
sion should be stripped, flooded or de-
| stroyed---in the busiest and most i'm
dustrial part of the French provinces,
which not inaptly have been described
as the combined Lancashire and York.
shire midlands country of Frpnce.
How misleading 1t would bc TO fancy
that remedial measures" will be the
same in every case, that a single for
mula can solve the problem of Euro
pean reconstruction!" This problem,
as we have seen, includes three very
4 .rsr rr- - -