Except perhaps in Russia. Russia, for all we know, may have sunken very deep.
But if there is no vigorous world effort made soon the trading class, the foreman class, the technically educated class, the professional class, the teachers, and so forth, will have been broken up and dispersed. These classes are comparatively easy to destroy, extremely hard to reconstruct. Modern civilization will really have been destroyed, if not for good, for a long period, over great areas if these classes go.
And the process is at present still spreading rapidly. If it gets Germany—and it seems to be getting Germany—then Italy may follow. Italy is linked very closely to Germany economically and financially. The death of Germany will chill the economic blood of Italy. Italy is passionately anxious to disarm on land and sea. But Italy cannot disarm while France maintains a great army and makes great naval preparations. France’s refusal to disarm prevents Italy from disarming. The lira sways and sinks; its value fluctuates not perhaps so widely as do marks and kronen but much too widely for healthy industrial life and social security. And Italy is troubled by its restless nationalists, a whooping flag-waving crew of posturing adventurers without foresight or any genuine love of country. If nothing is done, I think I would give Germany about six months and North Italy two years before a revolutionary collapse occurs.
This new rhetorical France which remains heavily armed while no man threatens, which builds new ships to fight non-existent German armies and guards itself against the threats of long dead German Generals—one of M. Briand’s hair-raising quotations is to be found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and must be nearly twenty years stale—the renascent France which jostles against Italy and England and believes that it can humbug America for good and all while it does these things, will it pull through amid the general disaster of Europe? Will it achieve its manifest ambition and remain dominant in Europe, the dominance of the last survivor, the cock upon the dunghill of a general decay? I doubt it.
Watch the franc upon the exchange as the true meaning of the French search for “security” dawns upon the world. Watch the subscription to the next French loan to pay for more submarines and more Senegalese. It may prove to be too difficult a feat, after all, for France to wreck the rest of Europe, to destroy her commerce by destroying her customers, and yet to save herself. When France begins to break, she may break very quickly. Under the surface of this exuberant French patriotism runs a deep tide of Communism, raw and red and insanely logical.