390 INTERNATIONAL TRADE during that brief period at great profit; a profit so great that they could be sold abroad at low prices and yet leave a handsome margin to be shared between the German exporters and the various trade speculators. But the volume of this trade was small, because Germany was bare of physical goods. For that very reason, the bounty, so long as the peculiar situation endured, was high on the few goods that were available. The much-discussed German episode was exceptional in another respect. The paper issues early assumed such extraordinary dimensions that those phenomena emerged which are characteristic of a currency much distrusted and no longer circulating freely. What has been said in the preceding paragraphs tacitly assumes that the output of paper money proceeds in a quasi-orderly fashion, in such way that the currency continues to circulate in normal ways. So long as this is the case, it affects prices in the same way as any increase of the circulating medium, be it specie, convertible notes, mere deposit currency. But very great issues of paper, succeeding each other very rapidly, work in a different way. As is familiar in monetary theory, their effect will be catastrophic; in a sense, quite abnormal. The usual ways of handling money and of handling goods become quite upset ; every- one who has the money wishes to get rid of it, to spend it, as quickly as possible; everyone who has goods is chary of parting with them for money. Then ensue the familiar phenomena of complete monetary collapse and complete demoralization of trade and industry. All is chaos; perhaps not quite without rhyme or reason, but very much less reducible to rule than what happens in ordinary experience and is premised in ordinary reasoning. The conclusions just indicated concerning the effects on international trade of continuing issues which are fairly moderate, are little applicable to this extreme situation. Foreign exchange, like every- thing else, fluctuates in price spasmodically, with little discernible relation to other prices. I doubt whether any trend toward its being higher or lower than the prices of exported goods or of imported goods is likely to appear. What happens is mainly the complete dislocation of all trade, and the deadening of all industry,