ABSTRACT
Before 1870 different parts of the small continent of Europe had specialized in their own products; but, taken as a whole, it was substantially self-subsistent. After 1870 there was developed on a large scale an unprecedented situation, and the economic condition of Europe became during the next fifty years unstable and peculiar. The accumulative habits of Europe before the war were the necessary condition of the greatest of the external factors which maintained the European equipoise. A great part of the Continent was sick and dying; its population was greatly in excess of the numbers for which a livelihood was available; its organization was destroyed, and its transport system ruptured. It was the task of the Peace Conference to honor engagements and to satisfy justice; but not less to re-establish life and to heal wounds. The Old World employed with an immense prudence the annual tribute it was thus entitled to draw.
