Part 13

EXTRA LEAVES

(iii) On Money and League of Nations Currency

In the course of this little tour of Europe I bought 1,000 francs and 4,000 liras, and 1,500 drachmas, 3,000 dinars, and the same number of levas, some lei and 20,000 piastres, 7,000 Hungarian crowns and 32,000 Austrian crowns, 3,000 Czech crowns, 10,000 German marks, 15,000 odd Polish marks, 500 Belgian francs, and some paper money of the principality of Monaco.

You have to be somewhat of an arithmetician to think one week in piastres and the next in dinars, and the next in crowns, and the next in marks. You are always losing but you always think you are winning. You afford pleasure to strangers whenever you go because you can be robbed so easily and safely. In each country you can be robbed coming in and robbed going out and generally robbed in between. You do not mind very much, it is part of the legitimate expense of modern travel.

You accumulate great wads of paper. See the people of Vienna and Warsaw, their inside pockets are all misshapen by the bulge of the money. The pockets of an international traveller are worse. He holds his unnegotiable accumulation of the money which is not worth changing nor yet worth throwing away.

"How much do you expect to get for this?" said a Hungarian banker surveying a bulky packet of Turkish piastres. I mentioned a likely sum.

"Grande erreur!" he exclaimed, and lifted his hands in horror. In Budapest they were marketable only for a tenth of what I gave for them.

So the piastres remained together with provincial French notes and small denominations of dinars and what-not, nominally worth something somewhere, but in fact unsaleable.

The Germans have just now a very popular word for a nouveau-riche, it is a schieber, one who exchanges. Getting your money changed is one of the most wasteful processes for you and one of the most gainful for him.

A certain man had 10 pounds which he exchanged for 450 francs. Then he exchanged the francs for 600 lira; he journeyed by Fiume to Serbia and changed again for 900 dinars. At Belgrade he bought 6,000 Hungarian crowns. He carried the money to Budapest and then to Vienna, where he had some luck and got 15,000 Austrian crowns. However, at Prague the bankers said they did not encourage the sale of Austrian money as they did not know what it was worth. He got 1,000 Czech crowns, which in turn he changed to 10,000 Polish marks. He then changed those for 500 Roumanian lei, returned to Poland again and only received 8,000 marks at the re-exchange. At Berlin they looked very disparagingly at the Polish money and offered him 280 German marks for the lot. He changed this for 11 florins in Amsterdam, for which when he reached Antwerp he received 40 Belgian francs. His 10 pounds lingered tentatively over the abyss of a nothing.

The title of this story should be "Exchange is no robbery."

A golden or at least a paper rule for merchants dealing with foreign firms is "pay them when the exchange is most in your favour." But the foreign firm under these circumstances, having expected to get so much, gets in reality so much less. It is not surprising then that trade is sticky.

We hear much of the efforts of Governments and financiers to regulate the exchanges, but nothing comes of it. The only obvious cure is a Utopian one: institute one currency for Europe in the name of the League of Nations.

Let us have "League of Nations gold currency." But to have that the resources of Europe must be pooled. We are not ready for that.

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

IX. FROM PRAGUE

Czecho-slovakia is the watchdog of the new peace in Central Europe. She is the strongest new power, and is manifestly the best governed State which has arisen out of the ruins of the old. The new Bohemia (for Czecho-Slovakia is truly Bohemia) is a much more credible resurrection than the new Poland. One London daily refused to believe in the existence of Czecho-Slovakia for a long while. "Unless I see it," said the editor, "I will not be convinced." But Czecho-Slovakia is quite convincing--and is much less of a Frankenstein than Jugo-slavia. The Czechs are no doubt obscurely placed in Europe, but the traveller when he gets to their country--not the "seacoast of Bohemia"--will find that they make good showing.

Prague is a fine old city on the rolling Moldau--what a fine name, suggestive of rolling boulders down from the hills! Ancient Prague has this river for its moat. It rises on heights from old bridges to the royal palace and cathedral of the old kings of Bohemia. The new city has yet to be built. It will be on the level ground below, where there is to-day an agglomeration of shops and hotels as yet unworthy of the capital of a great new State. Here up above is all that is worth while, though seen from the battlements, the new below, especially on a cloudy day with lowering skies, is a very fine view. Here lie the old kings of Bohemia--one of them apparently "Good King Wenceslas." Here at a little distance are the mysterious walls with sentries posted at the gates--walls curiously and accidentally associated in the minds of thousands of children with Longfellow's lines:

I have read in some old, marvellous tale That a midnight host of spectres pale Beleaguered the walls of Prague.

Not a good place in which to lose yourself at night--outside these walls--as a party of us found on our first expedition there.

In the royal palace and offices are now accommodated the various ministeries of the new republic. Up in this purer air live also the President, M. Masaryk, and some of the diplomatic representatives of foreign powers. It is no doubt rare in this lazy age to find a new State administered and governed from the top of a crag, a steep climb on foot. But Czecho-Slovakia and Prague are governed from a mountain, and have the mountain point of view, which is the view of youth and vision.

The new State has some thirteen millions of inhabitants, and the majority of the people speak both Czech and German. German is naturally discouraged as being anti-national, and it is now only used in emergencies. All names of places have been Slavonized. Even Carlsbad and Marienbad are now Carlovivari and Mariansky Laznie. Where names of places have to be printed both in German and in Czech--German goes into small letters and Czech into large. After the armistice was declared in 1918, it only took a few hundred Czechs to overthrow the Austrian power and proclaim a new national republic. It was a bloodless revolution.

France and England were benevolently disposed toward a Czech republic, but America, thanks to the influence of the Slavophile millionaire, Charles Crane, with Wilson, and to the personal prestige of Masaryk, did most to confirm and strengthen Czecho-Slovakia. Gratitude to America is expressed everywhere, and Prague, in 1921, is perhaps the one capital in the world where Wilson's name and fame are still undimmed. Is not Wilson's face in bas-relief on the wall of the main station, "Gare Wilson," supported, curiously enough, by the admiring figures of two Bacchantes wreathed in the vine? It counts more to be an American in Prague than to be English. Crane's son is Minister for the United States; Crane's daughter-in-law, as painted by Mucha, is engraved on the new hundred-crown note. American relief-work and Mr. Hoover enjoy great prestige, and altogether there is for the time being the atmosphere of an enduring friendship.

The Czechs adopted a Parliamentary system, but finding that "one man one vote" brought to power new revolutionary elements, the system was quickly defunctionized. The administration is now appointed by the President, and he, having been elected by acclamation, "President for life," is in the nature of elective autocrat. However, after Masaryk, the term is to be limited to seven years, and a president may not serve two terms. The largest parties in the Parliament are the "Germans" and the "Social Democrats," each of which has seventy-two deputies and about forty senators. The National Democrats, who might be called the Masaryk party, are in the minority of nineteen deputies and ten senators. This party, nevertheless, is likely to maintain and hold the intellectual leadership of the nation. Czecho-Slovakia is not a peasant State like Bulgaria and Jugo-Slavia, but ex-Austrian bourgeois, with a large proportion of educated people.

It is a thick-set, burly, rather obstinate people, with imperturbable eyes. It is difficult to persuade one of the Czechs to do a thing against his will, or to compromise between his opinion and yours. Much more difficult to persuade than a Russian. And they are not as obedient as the Germans, or as amenable to splitting a difference as the British. It has been said they are Russian translated into German. Not polite or charming, but matter-of-fact, and a trifle on the rude side. There is in them a good deal of moderateness of gift, but they seem far more practical than the rest of the Slavs, and more virile. They have been Germanized and dullened by Austria, but in many respects they are more capable than the Germans. They seem to be the most capable people in their part of the world.

I met Dr. Benes, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, deputy-President in Masaryk's absence. It was on his initiative that the Little Alliance of Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia was founded, with the support of Italy and eventually including Roumania. Whilst this was nominally to prevent the return of the Hapsburgs or the reuniting of Austria and Hungary, it has also had another function--that of drawing together all the States deriving territory from the break up of Austria--even uniting Italy and Serbia, up till recently preoccupied with mortal enmity over the Dalmatic. It is a great service to unity to have this group of powers with a common understanding, and will perhaps be more highly appreciated in the future than it is now.

Dr. Benes is a spare, pinched-faced man of the people, not a typical Czech in appearance, a nervous type, of probably tireless energy. Not one of those that "sleep o' nights." He had, however, an agreeable smile of acquiescence when complimented on his work for unity. "I do not believe in the war after the war," said he. "All the nations that composed Austria-Hungary were exasperated, and have been in a bad mental state greatly aggravated by the war. We want to get rid of the war-mind. With that in view we are developing a policy which should make for stability in Central Europe. The most dangerous word used in propaganda against us in 'Balkanization'--as if to suggest that all these regions had become unstable and liable to Balkan quarrels. But, in truth, in three years we have made great progress towards a settled state of affairs.

"Germany will fall. If she agrees to pay she will fall, and equally if the sanctions are applied she will fall. She will not go so low as Austria because she is a much stronger national organism, but her export trade will be ruined, and the mark will become almost of no value. The application of the export duty on German goods is not popular, but we are applying it. It will raise the cost of living, and be a great inconvenience to many businesses which depend on Germany, but on the other hand some of our younger industries may be helped by such a measure of protection----"