The same dilemma affects the future of Poland in the role which France has cast for her.  She is to be strong, Catholic, militarist, and faithful, the consort, or at least the favorite, of victorious France, prosperous and magnificent between the ashes of Russia and the ruin of Germany.  Roumania, if only she could he persuaded to keep up appearances a little more, is a part of the same scatter-brained conception.  Yet, unless her great neighbors are prosperous and orderly, Poland is an economic impossibility with no industry but Jew-baiting.  And when Poland finds that the seductive policy of France is pure rhodomontade and that there is no money in it whatever, nor glory either, she will fall, as promptly as possible, into the arms of somebody else.

The calculations of “diplomacy” lead us, therefore, nowhere.  Crazy dreams and childish intrigue in Russia and Poland and thereabouts are the favorite indulgence at present of those Englishmen and Frenchmen who seek excitement in its least innocent form, and believe, or at least behave as if foreign policy was of the same genre as a cheap melodrama.

Let us turn, therefore, to something more solid.  The German Government has announced (October 30, 1919) its continued adhesion to a policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of Russia, “not only on principle, but because it believes that this policy is also justified from a practical point of view.”  Let us assume that at last we also adopt the same standpoint, if not on principle, at least from a practical point of view.  What are then the fundamental economic factors in the future relations of Central to Eastern Europe?

Before the war Western and Central Europe drew from Russia a substantial part of their imported cereals.  Without Russia the importing countries would have had to go short.  Since 1914 the loss of the Russian supplies has been made good, partly by drawing on reserves, partly from the bumper harvests of North America called forth by Mr. Hoover’s guaranteed price, but largely by economies of consumption and by privation.  After 1920 the need of Russian supplies will be even greater than it was before the war; for the guaranteed price in North America will have been discontinued, the normal increase of population there will, as compared with 1914, have swollen the home demand appreciably, and the soil of Europe will not yet have recovered its former productivity.  If trade is not resumed with Russia, wheat in 1920-21 (unless the seasons are specially bountiful) must be scarce and very dear.  The blockade of Russia, lately proclaimed by the Allies, is therefore a foolish and short-sighted proceeding; we are blockading not so much Russia as ourselves.

The process of reviving the Russian export trade is bound in any case to be a slow one.  The present productivity of the Russian peasant is not believed to be sufficient to yield an exportable surplus on the pre-war scale.  The reasons for this are obviously many, but amongst them are included the insufficiency of agricultural implements and accessories and the absence of incentive to production caused by the lack of commodities in the towns which the peasants can purchase in exchange for their produce.  Finally, there is the decay of the transport system, which hinders or renders impossible the collection of local surpluses in the big centers of distribution.