Imports consisted of foodstuffs, grains, cattle, dairy products, dry goods, oils and certain metals. On the export or credit side of the balance sheet may be listed, as the principal items, chemicals, dye stuffs, manufactured articles and incomes from the merchant marine. I mention this here in passing, as I shall have occasion to refer to these facts later, in an effort to show the interdependence of the nations of continental Europe in the maintenance of stable and normal peace conditions.

While the situation in Germany is as here depicted, let us see what conditions are in the surrounding countries. It was my privilege to spend considerable time in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Holland, and I shall therefore deal with these countries only. Having all emerged from the war period without taking an active part in the terrible struggle, it is to a certain extent natural that there should be a marked similarity in their respective internal conditions. Thus high prosperity appeared to reign universally, resulting in lavish expenditure.

To anyone acquainted with the larger cities, particularly in the Scandinavian countries, in pre-war days, the contrast would be very marked. I think it is safe to say that the merchants of a city endeavor to display in their windows the articles with which it is their hope to stimulate trade, the articles most generally in demand, the articles within reach of the purchasing power of the public at large. Amsterdam has always been very much of a city of the world, like London, Paris, New York or Buenos Aires, so the contrast there is not so great. Take Scandinavian cities, however, cities like Christi: nia, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Copenhagen. In pre-war days, you would walk through the principal shopping districts, and see very handsome shops, yet modest according to the scale of London, Paris and New York. Today these same shops seem to cater to an entirely different public, a public distinctly possessed with riches. Yet this wealth has come to but a comparatively small number.

The crying need of the warring nations throughout the four long years of the struggle was food; food, and food at any price. Hence the neutral countries surrounding England, France and Germany supplied this food not from the normal surplus available for export, over and above home consumption, but by a rash depletion of their productive stocks of cattle, hogs, horses, and even grains, of which none really had a material surplus,

or even, in the majority of cases, enough for their own use. I well remember fifteen years ago going with my father to buy a pair of very beautiful driving horses for $350. During 1917 and 1918, horses were sold to Germany by these neut al countries, ordinary farm horses, for ten times that figure, with hogs and cattle bringing prices in proportion. In other words, the allurement of fabulous prices was sufficient to cause the natural wealth, the productive wealth, of these countries, if we may call it so, to diminish with startling rapidity; with the result that home demands for the necessaries of life mounted higher and higher beyond the available supplies, with prices following in proportion until the cost of living was there an even more serious problem than it is here. When the Armistice was signed the shelves and warehouses of merchants were empty, and a wild orgy of buying - principally, not to say exclusively, from this country began, causing a heavy adverse trade balance, with a corresponding decline in the rate of exchange.

A further factor, and one which has largely augmented the labor unrest, has been the lack of raw materials for their industries. It is a fact well known that, with the sole exception of Sweden, none of the countries mentioned here possess natural resources of coal, iron, oil or any of the other raw materials essential to industrial activity. The supplies in Sweden are insufficient for export on a large scale, and during the war all went to Germany, and as the door was practically closed for exports from this country, England or Germany, industrial activity practically ceased, or was at least so substantially curtailed as to force labor into idleness, in compliance with the law of supply and demand.

In this connection, I recall a remark made by Mr. Ole Hansen recently, with reference to the French Commune of 1848, for what has transpired in the Scandinavian countries bears a very close resemblance to this, and emphasizes the sad but true statement made by him, that no one learns by any experience except their own.

It so happened that during the latter years of the war the party in power in all three Scandinavian countries happened to be Radical. These three countries have very similar forms of government, and it is therefore quite natural to expect that party lines should be drawn somewhat according to a common tape measure. The Majority party is the conservative or left party, but in addition to this we find two other strong groups,

the Socialists and the Radicals, and the two latter have made common cause of the conditions brought about the war, and together control the governments in all three Scandinavian countries today. Representing, as the Socialists do, the Labor elements, a valiant effort was made to do something to overcome the serious condition resulting from the widespread nonemployment, and here it is that history appears to repeat itself, confirming the statement referred to above.

In all three countries a "Non-Employment Support Act" was passed, with what seems the honest intention of giving Federal aid to those who had been forced out of work as a result of the abnormal circumstances. The money for this purpose was raised by the Federal governments, through graded income taxation of a very radical nature, as becomes a Radical government, and the burden of taxation was placed upon those who could bear it and whose incomes had been swelled by war profits. In theory, this seemed fair and reasonable, and a just way to escape from a disagreeable predicament. Theory and practice do not, however, always synchronize, and the practical result was not as ideal as the theory; the theory did not prove to be a panacea for the evil confronting the government. The number of non-employed in industrial occupations increased prodigiously; and not only that, but it seemed, for instance, more and more difficult to secure servant girls as well, of which the supply had previously been sufficient to satisfy the demand. Two concrete examples will serve to exemplify this situation.

A man owned a small cigar store, from which he managed to extract an annual income of 3,500 Kr. a year. While a boy, however, he had learned the masonry trade, and had in his possession his certificate showing him to have reached the state of journeyman mason at some previous stage of his life. When this Non-Employment Support Act was passed, he suddenly remembered this valuable certificate, and decided that his past education should and ought to be turned to his profit, and make of him a more substantial and prominent citizen. Consequently, he promptly became a member of the masons' union on the strength of his certificate, arranged with his wife to look after the cigar store, and proceeded to the government bureau for non-employment support each morning at 9 o'clock, and registered as a journeyman union mason out of employment, securing thereby a Federal recompense equivalent to

50% of what he would have earned had he been able to secure masonry work. In this way he increased his earning capacity from Kr. 3,500 a year to Kr. 6,000, and promptly became a much more prominent figure in the community.

In the case of servant girls, the practice was this. A cook or waitress commands from 50 to 70 Kr. per month, whereas a girl in the shops receives a remuneration of 80 to 90 Kr. per month, with a non-employment allowance from the Federal government of from 40 to 50 Kr. per month. Under these conditions, what happened was this. A servant girl would go to a corset factory, of which there are a great many in Denmark, for instance, and seek employment. Receiving this, she would join the corset manufacturers' union. Being, however, utterly inexperienced in this sort of work she would usually find herself promptly discharged on account of incompetency, if she did not voluntarily leave, which seemed more frequently to be the case. Nevertheless, the short factory employment had served its useful purpose, inasmuch the girl had joined a recognized union and was now in position to register with the government bureau for the unemployed and receive her 40 to 50 Kr. per month. This was a very simple and easy way to make money without toiling for others, or without any other exertion save that of registering at the government bureau each morning at 9 o'clock, as was the requirement of the law.

In justice and fairness to the government, it should be said that the act had been passed in good faith, and for a purpose high-minded and humanitarian, at least in theory, and the abuse to which it was subjected proved actually to be a source of very considerable worry to the governments of these countries. Honest efforts were made to apprehend the perverters of the law, and severe punishments were inflicted when dishonesty was proved. Thus at the time I left Europe, a bill was being introduced into the national legislature, designed to materially restrict this class of support, as the only means of overcoming this abuse.

It must be quite evident from what has been said above, that the law in this instance served to break down the morale of the people rather than to upbuild it, and was as a matter of fact a very pronounced contributory cause to widespread and serious labor difficulties throughout these countries. Wage agreements between employer and employees were broken without just or adequate cause, strikes were of the daily occurrences;

and how as a matter of fact could any other result be expected, when in reality the government invited strikes in protecting the strikers, by supporting them when out of employment? The bill just referred to, for one thing, withdrew non-employment support from strikers or labor subject to lockout. To further illustrate this unreasonable and arbitrary attitude on the part of labor, let me recount one situation of which I very nearly became an innocent and unsuspecting victim.

I happened to be in Norway the latter part of July, when on a Friday afternoon I was advised by way of rumor that a nation-wide strike was to be declared Sunday night at 12 o'clock and was to last for 24 hours. Rumor likewise gave as reason for the strike a desire on the part of labor to register a protest against the Allied Governments' action towards Bolshevist Russia, the Lenine and Trotsky Regime. It hardly seemed credible that such a futile stab in the air could really be thought of, much less attempted. Nevertheless, the rumor persisted very ominously, and all the business people with whom I was carrying on negotiations at that time were actually preparing to leave Christiania on Saturday and retire to the country until Tuesday. Under the circumstances I decided to take no chances, as I had to be in Gothenburg Tuesday, and managed to finish my work and board a train for Sweden Sunday at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, which incidentally proved to be the last train for 24 hours to leave Christiania for Sweden. The fact was, that on Sunday night at 12 midnight the strike actually went into effect. Not a train moved in the whole of Norway for 24 hours, not a street car turned a wheel, not a shop opened, no food was served in the restaurants that involved cooking, steamers lay idle at their piers, the wheels of industry did not turn, the country was dead, and the strike was complete: Accomplishing what? Nothing, except a tremendous amount of inconvenience to everybody, and possibly aiding in chiming the anvil chorus of sympathy for the suffering and hard-pressed laboring man. The pendulum unquestionably has swung to its extreme as regards labor's power in dictating the policies of a nation with the world at such a pass. Another incident of which I happened to be a victim, which occurred in Copenhagen later, may also be of interest in this connection. The latter part of August a number of stevedores working in the Free Harbor at Copenhagen decided to stay away from work for a few days, and when they returned