DISCOVERY 



105 



portions. Banks and stockbrokers are overwhelmed 

 with speculative business, and two important provincial 

 banks have been ruined by illegitimate exchange 

 speculation undertaken by their officials. A veritable 

 orgy has taken place in the field of company promotion. 

 In 1913 shares of the nominal vaule of M. 635,000,000 

 were issued in Germany. In 1921 share issues came 

 to M. 19,229,000,000, or were more than thirty times 

 as large as during the pre-war year. In 1916 the 

 share capital of all the German companies came to 

 M. 16,000,000,000, in 1919 it stood at M. 20,300,000,000, 

 in 1920 it reached M. 29,000,000,000, and in 1921 it 

 arrived at M, 54,700,000,000. Many companies have 

 doubled, trebled, and quadrupled their capital. 



Germany's post-war prosperity has been built up on 

 the treacherous basis of unsound finance. Inflation is 

 always followed by deflation. Every boom leads 

 to a slump, and the wilder the advance has been, the 

 more terrible will be the crash. England and the United 

 States have suffered severely from the reaction which 

 followed a relatively unimportant currency inflation 

 and boom. The unparalleled expansion of business in 

 Germany and the extraordinary advance in prices are 

 bound to be followed by an unparalleled crash and 

 ruin. Meanwhile Germany seems highly prosperous. 

 In 1913 there were 9.725 bankruptcies in Germany, and 

 in 1921 there were only 2,975. 



The tremendous advances in stock exchange quota- 

 tions and the extraordinary activity of the industries 

 in Germany are largely due to the depreciation of 

 money. Fearing the continued decline of the value of 

 money, and wishing to anticipate a corresponding rise 

 in prices, most Germans are trying to convert their 

 money into more reliable values. People of means buy 

 land, houses, and stock exchange securities, while poor 

 people clear the shops of their contents, and buy boots 

 and clothes for years ahead. The prosperity of the 

 German industries is rather due to the frantic home 

 demand than to the expansion of the export trade. 



A crash is bound to follow the present mania. How- 

 ever, such an event will not destroy the great physical 

 and human resources which form the foundation of 

 Germany's wealth. The Government endeavours to 

 strengthen the wealth-creating factors of the country 

 to the best of its ability. The railway sj-stem is 

 rapidly being enlarged and improved. Numerous 

 electric power stations are being created. Vast inland 

 waterways are being constructed ; among the latter 

 is a deep canal which will connect the Rhine with the 

 Danube and which will cost more than M. 2,000,000,000. 

 When the reconstruction of Russia is taken in hand, 

 Gf-rmany will probably obtain b}' far the largest share. 

 Hundreds of thousands of Germans know Russian, and 

 hundreds of thousands of Russian emigrants are living 

 in Germany and are becoming Germanised. The 



Germans love work. They are naturally painstaking 

 and progressive, and " ca'canny " is unknown to them. 

 Owing to these factors Germany should rapidly recover, 

 provided she enjoys peace and political stability. 



REFERENCES 

 Slaiisiisches Jahrbuch fiir das Deutsche Reich (various years 

 and vanous prices, Berlin, Puttkammer & Miihlbrecht) ; current 

 German official publications, periodicals, and dailies; Charles 

 Rist, Les Finances de Guerre de I'Allemagne (Payot, Paris, 

 1921, 15 francs) ; J. Ellis Barker, Modern Germany (sixth 

 edition, John Murray, 15s.). 



The Renascence of the 

 English Short Story — II 



By Thomas Moult 



In America the storyetteof the mechanicians has reached 

 a level of skill that is often hard to distinguish from 

 original talent. The English average has seemed to 

 sink lower and lower even,' year. The short-story 

 writers who have taken any artistic pride in their 

 work during this score of years can be almost counted 

 on one's fingers, nor has their work, with one or two 

 exceptions, been found as a regular feature of the 

 popular magazines. Of this handful of writers, some 

 are still working, and working well ; and they have 

 been recruited by a group of younger artists who, even 

 more than their older fellows, have regarded the short 

 story as a pursuit in itself, and by no means a side- 

 issue of their more serious activities in literature. 

 Some of these are inclined to the old-fashioned and 

 some to the newer methods. In what proportions 

 they may be classified is a point of no importance 

 compared with the fact that, new or old, the prac- 

 titioners of the present are at one in recognising the 

 infinite possibilities of the genre as it is now regarded 

 by all who have been forced to consider it elastic 

 and no longer confined to boundaries. The short stoiy, 

 in a word, is being discovered afresh. 



Leonard Merrick and Stacy Aumonier, for example, 

 with a slight bias to the storj' of plot, are each in their 

 own unique way contributing something suggestive 

 and tentative to the art. Their work centres still 

 in a single incident, clear-cut and roundly defined from 

 the first word to the last. Stacy Aumonier may almost 

 be said to attempt in England what O. Henry just 

 failed to do in America— to make the anecdote some- 

 thing more than an anecdote. Merrick, with an ironical 

 finesse and delicacy that are all his own, has made 

 Henry Murger's Bohemian life, in its modem aspect, 

 look exactly as our matter-of-fact age desires to see it. 

 " ' I am very pleased to meet you," he said with dis- 

 gust " — that is a typical line from Merrick's writings 

 that seems to make plain the whole outlook of its in- 



