318 
INTERNATIONAL TRADE 
the end of the war the gap between imports and exports could not 
remain so vast. The prices of the commodities on which the 
war demand had impinged most directly — explosives, metals, 
foodstuffs — could not but plunge downwards. The general 
price level must cease to rise; presumably it would fall. 
It is quite in accord with previous experience under analogous 
conditions that the revulsion did not take place immediately. 
For a few months immediately succeeding the armistice there was 
a halt, a taking of breath as it were. Then the business world 
made an endeavor to resume and maintain the mad pace of the 
war. So it was at least in the victorious and the neutral coun- 
tries; and even the defeated made some such start. The full 
history of the speculative period which began early in 1919 and 
ended with the crisis of the autumn of 1920 is still to be written. 
Much affected by the anomalous monetary conditions of the post- 
war period, it had all the characteristics of an inflationist craze. 
But both gold-standard countries and paper-standard coun- 
tries; both those with wide use of deposit and check systems, and 
those making but slender use of that powerful mechanism; coun- 
tries almost exhausted by the war and countries to which it had 
brought affluence — all alike went thru the same excitement and 
the same revulsion. Perhaps something of the kind was inevitable : 
a stage of release and buoyance, and then at last the slow and 
bitter process of recovery from the lasting effects of the desperate 
struggle. 
The course of the international trade of the United States under 
these conditions was in accord with the general movement. Here 
too there was a false start, followed by a painful readjustment. 
For a considerable period the situation was one to which the 
ordinary formulae could not apply. 
The figures of the imports and exports of goods, and those of the 
flow of specie, are curious. Consider first the calendar years from 
1 Not only its history, but its lessons with regard to monetary problems remain 
to be clarified. The causes by which the decline of prices was finally precipitated ; 
the links of connection between that decline and the volume of credit and of cur- 
rency ; the part played by public finance and government deficits; the interaction 
of domestic trade and foreign trade — here are matters which give the economists 
much to reflect on.