Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/179

Rh economic catastrophe had been surely foreshadowed as a result of it, seemed to throw light, not only on the German financial achievements in peace, but on the nature and probable longer outcome of the government's financial achievements in war.

From this point of view, there is much that is enlightening in the book under review. The "pyramiding" of capital for purposes of economic penetration of foreign markets; the subordinating of the home market's welfare to the main objective of the world-exploiting policy; the diverting of banks from their proper functions to the promotion of foreign enterprise on a constantly expanding scale, with extension of credits for periods far beyond the limits prescribed by the experience of prudent bankers—each and all of these expedients, described as an element in the period before the war, has subsequently been invoked for the purpose of ensuring success to the empire's war borrowings.

Formal appeals of the treasury to German investors have urged the use of securities already owned as a basis for credits wherewith to subscribe to the government's war loans, and have intimated indefinite extension of such credits. The condition of the currency (shown by the recent discount of nearly 50 per cent. in the mark on foreign exchange), the complete disorder of other industries than those producing war material, and the attempt to dispense entirely with taxes as a means of meeting war expenditure, are parallel instances in the subordination of the home market to the imperial programme. The extent to which the portfolios of the German private banks have been progressively crowded with loans to promote subscriptions to the government's borrowings is at least suggested by the prodigious rediscounting operations of the Reichsbank at every quarter-day; notably by the $1,000,000,000 expansion of its loan account in the week before last April's loan was floated. It is no unreasonable presumption that, whether or not Professor Millioud's view is correct, of economic catastrophe as an outcome of Germany's methods in obtaining economic dominion over the outside world, the prophecy will at least be realized in the longer sequel to her war financing.

But this is not what the author undertakes primarily to prove. The aim of his book is to demonstrate that misgiving and apprehension as to the approaching crash, in consequence of the overdone exploitation of foreign fields, were the real cause of the present war. Rather than await "the downfall of her credit, the misery which must overwhelm her people, and the fury which would perhaps possess them in consequence", Germany seized what she thought to be the opportunity for a successful war, such as would sweep aside all other considerations.

The reader will hardly be convinced that the events of 1914 admit of this single explanation. That the commercial classes may have been reconciled to those events, through doubt regarding their own financial prospects, is possible. There is evidence that such an influence prevailed in Austria, whose financial condition in 1914 was notoriously