256 THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE cu.

hardly have been otherwise. It was a European quarrel, in which the United States Governmentcould not have justified itself before its citizens inexpending the whole national strength, as did theEuropeans. After the United States came into thewar her financial assistance was lavish and unstinted,and without this assistance the Allies could never havewon the war, 1 quite apart from the decisive influenceof the arrival of the American troops. Europe, too, should never forget the extraordinary assistanceafforded her during the first six months of 1919through the agency of Mr. Hoover and the AmericanCommission of Relief. Never was a nobler workof disinterested goodwill carried through with moretenacity and sincerity and skill, and with less thankseither asked or given. The ungrateful Governmentsof Europe owe much more to the statesmanship andinsight of Mr. Hoover and his band of American workers than they have yet appreciated or will everacknowledge. The American Relief Commission,and they only, saw the European position duringthose months in its true perspective and felt towards

1 The financial history of the six months from the end of the summerof 1916 up to the entry of the United States into the war in April1917 remains to be written. Very few persons, outside the half-dozenofficials of the British Treasury who lived in daily contact with theimmense anxieties and impossible financial requirements of those days,can fully realise what steadfastness and courage were needed, and howentirely hopeless the task would soon have become without the assistanceof the United States Treasury. The financial problems from April 1917onwards were of an entirely different order from those of the precedingmonths.