I see no possible means of repairing this loss of productivity within any reasonable period of time except through the agency of German enterprise and organization.  It is impossible geographically and for many other reasons for Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Americans to undertake it;—­we have neither the incentive nor the means for doing the work on a sufficient scale.  Germany, on the other hand, has the experience, the incentive, and to a large extent the materials for furnishing the Russian peasant with the goods of which be has been starved for the past five years, for reorganizing the business of transport and collection, and so for bringing into the world’s pool, for the common advantage, the supplies from which we are now so disastrously cut off.  It is in our interest to hasten the day when German agents and organizers will be in a position to set in train in every Russian village the impulses of ordinary economic motive.  This is a process quite independent of the governing authority in Russia; but we may surely predict with some certainty that, whether or not the form of communism represented by Soviet government proves permanently suited to the Russian temperament, the revival of trade, of the comforts of life and of ordinary economic motive are not likely to promote the extreme forms of those doctrines of violence and tyranny which are the children of war and of despair.

Let us then in our Russian policy not only applaud and imitate the policy of non-intervention which the Government of Germany has announced, but, desisting from a blockade which is injurious to our own permanent interests, as well as illegal, let us encourage and assist Germany to take up again her place in Europe as a creator and organizer of wealth for her Eastern and Southern neighbors.

There are many persons in whom such proposals will raise strong prejudices.  I ask them to follow out in thought the result of yielding to these prejudices.  If we oppose in detail every means by which Germany or Russia can recover their material well-being, because we feel a national, racial, or political hatred for their populations or their Governments, we must be prepared to face the consequences of such feelings.  Even if there is no moral solidarity between the nearly-related races of Europe, there is an economic solidarity which we cannot disregard.  Even now, the world markets are one.  If we do not allow Germany to exchange products with Russia and so feed herself, she must inevitably compete with us for the produce of the New World.  The more successful we are in snapping economic relations between Germany and Russia, the more we shall depress the level of our own economic standards and increase the gravity of our own domestic problems.  This is to put the issue on its lowest grounds.  There are other arguments, which the most obtuse cannot ignore, against a policy of spreading and encouraging further the economic ruin of great countries.

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