88 THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE CH.

complication as compared with the former almostperfect simplicity of international trade. But in theno less extraordinary conditions of to-day's industryit is not without advantages as a means of stimulatingproduction. The butter-shifts of the Ruhr 1 show howfar modern Europe has retrograded in the direction ofbarter, and afford a picturesque illustration of thelow economic organisation to which the breakdownof currency and free exchange between individualsand nations is quickly leading us. But they mayproduce the coal where other devices would fail. 2

Yet if Germany can find coal for the neighbouringneutrals, France and Italy may loudly claim that inthis case she can and must keep her treaty obligations.In this there will be a great show of justice, and itwill be difficult to weigh against such claims thepossible facts that, while German miners will workfor butter, there is no available means of compell-ing them to get coal, the sale of which will bring innothing, and that if Germany has no coal to send toher neighbours she may fail to secure imports essentialto her economic existence.

If the distribution of the European coal supplies isto be a scramble in which France is satisfied first,Italy next, and every one else takes their chance, the

1 "Some 60,000 Ruhr miners have agreed to work extra shifts—so-calledbutter-shifts—for the purpose of furnishing coal for export to Denmark, whence butter will be exported in return. The butter will benefit theminers in the first place, as they have worked specially to obtain it"(Kolnische Zeitimg, June 11, 1919).

2 What of the prospects of whisky-shifts in England ?