12 THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE ch.

together not only substantially exceeded that of theUnited States , but was about equal to that of thewhole of North America . In these numbers, situ-ated within a compact territory, lay the militarystrength of the Central Powers. But these samenumbers—for even the war has not appreciablydiminished them 1 —if deprived of the means of life,remain a hardly less danger to European order.

European Russia increased her population in adegree even greater than Germany —from less than100,000,000 in 1890 to about 150,000,000 at theoutbreak of war; 2 and in the years immediatelypreceding 1914 the excess of births over deaths inRussia as a whole was at the prodigious rate of twomillions per annum. This inordinate growth in thepopulation of Russia, which has not been widelynoticed in England, has been nevertheless one of themost significant facts of recent years.

The great events of history are often due tosecular changes in the growth of population andother fundamental economic causes, which, escapingby their gradual character the notice of contemporaryobservers, are attributed to the follies of statesmenor the fanaticism of atheists. Thus the extraordinaryoccurrences of the past two years in Russia, that vast

1 The net decrease of the German population at the end of 1918 bydecline of births and excess of deaths as compared with the beginning of1914, is estimated at about 2,700,000.

2 Including Poland and Finland, but excluding Siberia, Central Asia ,and the Caucasus.