220 THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE ch.

trade leads me to a necessary digression on thecurrency situation of Europe .

Lenin is said to have declared that the bestway to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauchthe currency. By a continuing process of inflation,governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved,an important part of the wealth of their citizens.By this method they not only confiscate, but theyconfiscate arbitrarily ; and, while the process im-poverishes many, it actually enriches some. Thesight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikesnot only at security, but at confidence in the equityof the existing distribution of wealth. Those towhom the system brings windfalls, beyond theirdeserts and even beyond their expectations or desires,become ££ profiteers," who are the object of thehatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism hasimpoverished, not less than of the proletariat. Asthe inflation proceeds and the real value of thecurrency fluctuates wildly from month to month, allpermanent relations between debtors and creditors,which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism,become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaning-less ; and the process of wealth-getting degeneratesinto a gamble and a lottery.

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler,no surer means of overturning the existing basis ofsociety than to debauch the currency. The processengages all the hidden forces of economic law on the