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186 outright or paid for by warrants issued by the commanding officers. Once the stocks were gone their former owners replaced them, if at all, only by buying for minimum current requirements. The paper money issues also demoralized mercantile accounts and the stories of the experiences of some of those who found themselves forced to accept worthless paper for goods they had purchased on a gold basis are among the most extraordinary which the revolution produced.

In mercantile as in industrial activities a gradual improvement from 1918 on has occurred with the re-adoption of the gold standard and establishment of comparative order by governments whose control is accepted or acquiesced in by the war-weary population.