vn THE SETTLEMENT OF EUROPE 169

to execute it. And, whilst no one can predict with,what particular sauce the makers of the Treaty willeat their words, there can no longer be any questionof the actual enforcement of this Chapter. And therehas been a third factor, not quite in accordance withexpectations, paradoxical at first sight, but natural,nevertheless, and concordant with past experience,—the fact that it is in times of growing profits and notin times of growing distress that the working classesstir themselves and threaten their masters. Whentimes are bad and poverty presses on them theysink back again into a weary acquiescence. GreatBritain and all Europe have learnt this in 1921. Wasnot the French Eevolution rather due perhaps to thegrowing wealth of eighteenth-century France —for atthat time France was the richest country in theworld—than to the pressure of taxation or the ex-actions of the old regime ? It is the profiteer, notprivation, that makes man shake his chains.

In spite, therefore, of trade depression and dis-ordered exchanges, Europe , under the surface, ismuch stabler and much healthier than two years ago.The disturbance of minds is less. The organisation,destroyed by war, has been partly restored ; trans-port, except in Eastern Europe , is largely repaired;there has been a good harvest, everywhere but inEussia, and raw materials are abundant. GreatBritain and the United States and their marketsoverseas have suffered a cyclical fluctuation of trade