They wouldn't need to starve if they would get to work.” The retort and the criticism which it implies are as shallow as they are selfish. Central Europe wants to work. It is begging for the chance to work; but it cannot work efficiently while it is under-nourished.

Here in Prague there is an American business man who has probed deeper into the Czecho-Slovak economic situation than all the politicians. He has found a way to feed the nation and to make a profit for himself. He bases his calculations on the firm belief that a people, heretofore industrious, still retains the habit; all they require to set them on their feet is food. He is willing to provide the food and to risk his capital on their bare word that they will play the game by him.

He has started his experiment with the miners of Carlsbad. The Government food-ration allowed to working miners is precisely half what it ought to be. He has offered to supply the other half of the ration, bringing their allowance up to normal, on condition that the miners will do their best to increase their output of coal by 20 per cent. They are not to make this increase by working overtime, but by speeding up during their ordinary working hours. The average of their present output is calculated on the results of the past nine months. As repayment and profit on his investment, he is given the option to purchase one-half of the 20 per cent, increased output at the inland price, i.e., the price that coal is selling for in Czechoslovakia. He makes his profit by exporting. The question immediately arises, why could not Czecho-Slovakia do the exporting and make the profit herself? The answer is that the partitioning of Austro-Hungary by the Peace Treaty and the consequent establishing of new frontiers has bred such a deep international distrust that the new nations are reluctant to let their freight-cars pass out of their own territory for fear they should never recover them. At the border merchandise is unloaded and re-shipped, which adds considerably to the expense of transportation. Major S., being an American, has a superior reputation for integrity and His word is accepted when he promises that cars carrying his shipments out of Czechoslovakia will be returned.

The scheme is much more far-reaching than at first sight it appears. It embraces not only the feeding of the men, but also of their families. His share of the coal he intends to sell to Austria, just across the border, where the scarcity of every kind of fuel is causing a crisis. When he has done this, many Austrian factories which have been standing idle will be able to re-open. So, by feeding the Carlsbad miners, he is re-employing the Austrian working-man.

He was warned when he first discussed his plans, that they would be rejected by Government and miners alike. On the contrary they have been eagerly accepted by both Government and miners; but most eagerly by the miners. The miners all over Czecho-Slovakia are clamouring to be given the same opportunity. If it pays an individual to indulge in this kind of commercial enterprise, it would equally pay the Allies. For, while this is no philanthropy, it attains the ends of philanthropy and has the added advantage that it is economically constructive. To state the case cynically, the politicians of the Allies can play the part of Good Samaritans and find themselves in pocket. The experiment which has started with the miners of Carlsbad can be extended to cover almost all branches of industry. But the value of the experiment and its eager acceptance proves that it is not unwillingness, but inability due to undernourishment, that prevents Central Europe from getting to work.

In Czecho-Slovakia, as in Hungary and Austria, the commercial stagnation which has produced every kind, of shortage, is chiefly to be traced to the establishing of new frontiers. When the Peace Treaty repartitioned Europe, it took apart a watch which was going, and failed to put it together. All the cogs and wheels are still here, but they lie scattered about and consequently there is no movement. An example of this disorganization is near at hand. The peasants of a certain district of what is now Czecho-Slovakia, were accustomed to gain their bread by felling trees in the winter and floating them down the rivers in the summer to Hungary. In Hungary they sold their logs and stayed to help with the harvest. Then they returned to their homes in the mountains to eke out a livelihood for the next nine months with the money they had thus earned. Now that Ruthenia has become Czecho-Slovak and a frontier has been established, they are no longer allowed to pass freely into Hungary; consequently they starve.

The trees in their forests as of old stand ready for the cutting. The peasants are more anxious than ever to make their traditional excursion. But someone in Paris scrawled on a map with a blue pencil, so the trees are not felled and the peasants starve. Conditions are so bad in these primitive villages that the children would not have lived the year out had not the American Relief Administration made their rescue one of its special objects.

Here again, as with the miners, the starvation is not caused by unwillingness to work, but by the volcanic upheavals of war, followed by a political redistribution which has destroyed economic stability and criss-crossed Central Europe with hostile tariff walls in places where the flow of trade was once traditional and amiable. Whether these countries will be able to function efficiently after they have adapted themselves to their new boundaries is a question which only time can prove. For the moment, as though one had dammed torrents within new confines, diverting them from their ancient courses, there is a seething swirl of unrest, then an over-flowing and then stagnation.

All the railroads run towards Vienna, which was the great middleman city for the old empire. Hungary sent grain. Bohemia sent coal. They did their trading there and exchanged their products for commodities which they could not produce themselves. Today Vienna is isolated in a small patch of scrubby country which is the new Austria. The new Austria has no natural resources on which to maintain its population. The only way its people can hope to gain a living is by being again, what they once were, Central Europe's middlemen. But their currency is so debased that its purchasing value is almost gone. No one who had anything of actual value would go to Vienna to exchange it for their unreal money. Nevertheless, the railroads still converge there; there has been no time to change them. For all the purpose they serve they might as well run out into the Sahara desert. The political map, as re-arranged by the Peace, has built walls across most of the old travel-routes; it has given ancient hostilities a new means of venting their animosities, has destroyed confidence and dislocated the entire system of transport. This is without doubt the fundamental answer to the question, “Why does Central Europe starve?” The fault is not one of sulkiness or laziness on the part of the people who do the starving. They are not starving in order to spite the Allies or because they derive a patriotic ecstasy from starvation. They want to work and they prefer employment to charity. They claim the right to work; but if their work is to be of any value to the world, we must first restore to them their vitality, by nourishing their famished bodies, and then stabilise their economic conditions so that the marketing of the results of their industry may be assured.