F all the elements in European society, none was so hard hit by the war as were the middle classes. In every European country, belligerent or neutral, the middle strata of the population-salaried persons, professional men, shopkeepers, fund-holders were the war's chief economic victims. Their misfortunes have of course varied in different regions. In Russia they have been virtually destroyed, in central Europe they are withering away, in western Europe they are staggering under crushing burdens; but everywhere the trend is the same. Everywhere the middle classes have been depressed and impoverished since 1914.

Yet, whatever may be their ultimate destiny, the European middle classes are to-day assuredly fallen from their high estate. Their heyday was the nineteenth century. Even before that time the mercantile and professional elements of the towns (what the French term "the bourgeoisie") had attained a solid position of well-being. It was the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, however, which gave the middle classes their golden opportunity. Favored by the course of economic evolution, the middle classes reaped the chief share of the vast new wealth which the Industrial

Revolution created. Enriched, increased in numbers, and possessed of growing influence, they likewise acquired political power. Thus they prospered exceedingly and set their stamp upon every phase of human activity. It is not too much to say that nineteenth-century civilization was a middle-class civilization.

The opening decade of the twentieth century, to be sure, witnessed a certain diminution of middle-class prosperity. The economic trend which had long favored the middle classes was beginning to set in another direction. Factors like the concentration of capital in the hands of great financial or industrial magnates and the rapid increase of taxation were distinct handicaps to middle-class well-being. Even more unfavorable was the portentous rise in the cost of living, which virtually doubled between the years 1896 and 1914. Thus the outbreak of the Great War found the middle classes noticeably less well-off than they had been a generation before.

However, these new handicaps, while perceptible, were not alarming. In the main, the European middle classes were still prosperous and reasonably contented. They were still politically and economically powerful. Lastly, they had a solid faith in that

civilization which was so largely theirs, and they were generally considered to be the corner-stone of the existing social edifice.

Then came the war. Of course all classes, with minor exceptions, bravely answered the grim summons. But it was the middle classes which, with special fervor and unanimity, responded to the call. Preeminently believers in our modern civilization and in those national states which are its political expression, their patriotism stood ready for the heaviest sacrifices. Especially was this true of the professional elements. These most selfconscious sections of the middle classes had long been noted for high character and devotion to the public weal. It was they who had characteristically supported idealistic principles even when these conflicted sharply with self-interest. Causes like popular education, social betterment, and national defense, though involving heavy additional taxation, had always found their warmest advocates among these people of fixed salaries and inelastic incomes on whose shoulders an undue proportion of the new burdens must inevitably fall. To professional folk trades-union "customs" of short hours, limited output, and "ca' canny" were unknown. Also, the professional elements were the strongest upholders of rational social standards, spending themselves ungrudgingly in keeping up those standards by their own exertions and in giving their children the best possible start in life.

With such traditions the middle classes entered the war and promptly showed the stuff that was in them. Their young men were foremost in battle, their graybeards and women were in the front ranks of non-com

batant national service. In no phase of patriotic endeavor did they lag behind. War taxes, war loans, food rationing, charity, unpaid servicesthese, and a thousand other war burdens, were cheerfully, faithfully, enthusiastically borne.

Thus did the middle classes meet the test. And what has been their reward? The ugly truth may as well be faced: their reward is that they have been harder hit than any other social class, and furthermore that precisely those elements which displayed the greatest patriotic devotion (the professional elements) have come out worst of all. Capital has fattened on war profits, labor has about broken even on war wages; but the middleclass man, particularly the professional and salaried man, is left to face vastly increased living costs and crushing taxation with little to sustain him save the moral satisfaction of duty well done.

The plight of the middle classes has attracted much attention from students of contemporary affairs, since they realize fully its social and political implications. It was in the years immediately following the war that the lot of the middle classes was at its worst. Almost everywhere factors like soaring prices, inflated or debased currencies, and grinding taxation combined to hit the middle classes with unparalleled severity. Of course conditions varied considerably with different regions. They were least bad in western Europe and were at their worst in Russia; but even in western Europe they were almost unendurable.

How serious was the post-war plight of the British middle classes, for example, was vividly described by the well known English publicist Master

"The British middle classes," wrote Masterman at that time, "gaze on the terrible increase of prices with rising despair. They can do nothing to remedy it, and feel like rats caught in a trap. When they can, they demand higher salaries and receive occasional increases and bonuses, but these increases go only a very small way toward meeting the strain laid upon them, with the result that their only alternative is to 'do without'. They are tightening their belts to face a semi-starvation of their standard of life. They are far more badly hit than the workingman by the immense increase in prices. Not only is the middle class habituated to a much higher standard of living than the workingman, but the workingman's wages now rank absolutely above many salary schedules. So complete has been the social overturn in England that British municipalities pay scavengers and street-cleaners more than school-teachers, while no unskilled trades-unionist would be allowed to accept the salary of an average clergyman or insurance agent, and in the great newspaper offices the linotype composer who prints the paper can afford to despise the income of the journalist who writes the paper.

"Here, then," continues Mr. Masterman, "is a complete and startling transformation of values; not slowly changing from one to another, but suddenly and almost brutally forced upon the life of millions by causes altogether outside their own control. They work as hard, their desires are as modest, their tempers are as docile, their wish to please their employer is as great as before the war. They have not suddenly become, through the war, haughty and restless, or any

less efficient from defacement of intelligence or character, than they were in 1914. But misfortune has come upon them as if deflected by unknown malignant powers, like the four winds, which, in conformity with the request of Satan, destroyed the prosperity of the blameless patriarch Job."

Yet, depressed though the middle classes of western Europe might be, their lot was vastly better than that of their fellows in central and eastern Europe. There conditions were truly desperate, albeit even there misfortune was graded, touching the lowest depths in Bolshevik Russia.

Central European conditions are well illustrated by what occurred in Germany. In Germany, as in England, the middle classes showed throughout the war unfailing patriotic devotion and self-sacrifice. Their reward was similar, only far worse, since the depreciation of German money was so rapid that salaries and interest on investments were totally unable to meet the tremendous rise in the cost of living. Capitalists and working-men might pay post-war prices, but the salaried man or pensioner was left shivering and hungry in the cold.

Here is how a leading Berlin newspaper depicted the plight of the class known in Germany as "The New Poor." The root of their ills was stated to be the abysmal depreciation of the currency and the resultant prodigious rise in the cost of living, so that "multitudes of gently-bred families who lived comfortably before the war on a few thousand marks a year now require more than that sum to buy a day's bare necessities of life." Aristocratic families were described as doling out, for what prices they could get, all the furniture, paintings, china,

silver, and other treasured heirlooms piously handed down from generation to generation. Said this paper: "The New Poor number tens of thousands in Berlin, and they are scattered in hundreds of thousands all over Germany. Their names may be older than the dynasties which have disappeared from the scene, or their titles may have been created a few years ago by the same monarchs whose crowns went into the melting-pot. They may have been high up in the powerful bureaucracy before the war. They may have commanded brigades or regiments. They may have lived on pensions from the state or on income from stocks and bonds. Some lost positions and income through the political revolution. Others were the victims of the soaring cost of living. But whatever may have been their position in the past or their special misfortune in the present, they are all realizing the bitter truth of Benjamin Franklin's saying that the cost of war is not paid for in war-time, but afterward."

That this German description of middle-class conditions is not overdrawn is proved by the statements of foreign observers. Note this truly poignant picture of German middleclass life, from the pen of an Englishwoman resident in Germany:

"The greatest problem which each family has to face is how to find the means of livelihood to keep pace with the ever-rising cost of living. There, as in England, the wages of the working class have gone up tremendously, and a certain type of business man is doing extremely well. But there, as in England, the salaries of professional men have risen very little, so salaries cannot keep up with the extraordinary

rise of prices. Furthermore, if some salaries have risen enough to allow at least a slight approximation of income to expenditure, those dependent on pensions and interest on investments are now absolutely unable to maintain their former standard of living. All such people, and practically all professional men and officials, are now living on their capital, and, where the capital is small, are viewing the future with grave anxiety. There are many respectable families who are selling all their silver, and who will not know what to do when the last spoon is gone.

"It is very sad to see this class of people going under-for it is going under by degrees, and may disappear entirely to make room for the new society. These 'New Poor' were the true citizens who most conscientiously obeyed the heavy restrictions laid down in the rationing laws, and who were the last to break those laws when it was no longer possible to keep alive on the rations alone-when every other class had long since taken to providing food by more or less illicit ways. They were the ones who gave up every silver and gold coin, and all their brass ornaments and pans, while others hid them. They were the ones who invested their money in war-loans, and lost the earnings of a life-time. Is it surprising to find decent people bitter and cynical when they see how virtue is punished and selfishness rewarded; how only those who hoarded food and managed to eat more than their share have kept in good health; how those who hid their coins now get far more than their former value?

"The old middle class is dying out, for the health of thousands is undermined through years of underfeeding. Their minds are depressed and worried

by the daily struggle for life and the dark outlook, and every disease that breaks out takes a heavy toll of life. The new middle class which is springing up so rapidly consists mostly of what is known as the Schieber-the profiteer."

Conditions as above described in Germany were repeated with equal poignancy in Austria and other parts of central Europe. But nowhere were they as bad as in Soviet Russia. Elsewhere the middle classes had at least a measure of sympathy from their fellowcitizens of other social grades and retained some hope of ultimately bettering their lot. In Bolshevik Russia they became a proscribed and persecuted minority, vowed to destruction by the ferocious philosophy of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Disfranchised, deprived of the last remnants of their property, subjected to systematic oppression, condemned to the most menial and revolting tasks, their very lives held at the whim of brutal and fanatical "Commissars," the old Russian middle classes have been virtually destroyed.

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Such was the plight of the middle classes in the period immediately following the war. During the last two years, however, the tide has turned, and outside of Russia, where the old middle classes are virtually annihilated, conditions seem to be on the mend. The upward trend is, to be sure, nowhere rapid, but it appears to be general. Basically, it is due to economic causes, notably to a slackening of currency inflation and a consequent softening of price-levels. Here and there the burden of taxation is also being slightly reduced. Further

more, there is good evidence to indicate that if a fair degree of economic stability can be attained and new wars avoided, the world will see a period of falling prices. This would naturally favor the middle classes, since persons living from salaries, investments, or other forms of relatively fixed incomes would be the ones who would especially benefit.

Of course it should not be imagined that the middle classes are soon likely to regain anything approaching their pre-war prosperity. They have fallen so far that it would probably take at least a generation of favoring conditions to recover the lost ground. Meanwhile the least fortunate elements-the old, the infirm, and the unadaptable will continue miserable, and will be relentlessly weeded out by poverty, disease, and death. Yet already the more energetic and capable middle-class elements feel the stimulus of new hope and are redoubling their efforts to better their lot by concerted action.

This growth of middle-class groupconsciousness is a very interesting development. Before the war the middle classes showed almost no sense of group-solidarity. Their misfortunes during and since the war, however, have roused them to a sense of their numbers and potential strength, the result being a middle-class movement in various parts of Europe. This movement has taken two forms, the one exclusively middle class in character and essentially defensive in attitude, the other merging with other social elements, notably the upper classes, in an aggressive reaction against their common enemies, the revolutionary urban proletariat. The former phase of the middle-class move