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European Bystanders. The economic life of Europe's neutral nations was partly strangled not only by these changes but by force of arms. Switzerland, completely surrounded by combatants before the War was over, found itself on the verge of starvation for lack of foreign wheat. Only the end of the War in 1918, plus an exceptionally good harvest, saved the Swiss from famine. But armies eat chocolate, and Swiss chocolate manufacturers did a thriving business, for the Allies saw that they obtained raw materials. Swiss peasants who owned woodlots found they had a good market for fuel. Electric power derived from Swiss waterfalls was sold to both sides for use in making explosives. Meanwhile, the Swiss did a curious broker business. Germany needed French carbide-cyanamide for saltpeter, French bauxite for aluminum; France needed German iron and steel for emergency railroad tracks and barbed wire entanglements. Swiss dummies arranged the exchange of these commodities, with the tacit consent of the belligerents. The governments did not care whether German soldiers died on barbed wire that originated in a German factory, or whether British ships were torpedoed by German submarines made, in part, of aluminum from French bauxite, so long as the war was fought to a finish.
Holland, which had access to the sea, was never close to starvation. But the British, fearful that the Dutch would pass goods on to Germany, limited Dutch imports. Dutch exports of bulbs and diamonds fell along with needed imports. Meat exports increased in 1914 and 1915, dropped in 1916 and 1917 as Germany ran out of gold. Shipping was the great Dutch source of profit during the war; even though submarines and mines sank 199.975 tons of Dutch shipping, the total merchant tonnage of The Netherlands increased from 1,297,409 to 1.574,000 between 1914 and 1919. In 1915 the Holland-America Line paid 50% in dividends; in 1916, 55%. Gross profits of 17 largest Dutch steamship companies were 32,400,000 florins in 1913; 141,147,000 in 1916. Gold flowed into Dutch banks (as it also piled up in Swedish, Norwegian, Swiss and Spanish banks). But taxes went up. It cost the Dutch $600,000,000 to keep half a million men idle for four years along the German and Belgian frontiers and to intern prisoners from both sides, etc.
In Denmark the price level rose 111%. Breeders of livestock made money by selling meat to Germany and Austria in 1914, 1915 and 1916. Fodder shortages slashed production of butter and milk upon which a majority of the Danes live. Real wages in Copenhagen failed utterly to keep pace with the rising cost of living.
In Sweden, trade hummed; there was a mad rush to get rich in war industries and in shipping. But the industrial population, which depended on imported foodstuffs, found their wages inadequate to buy meat, which rose in price as the Government rationed it. Malnutrition and influenza contributed to raising the death rate in Sweden by a third in 1918-19. Norway did well with fish and lumber to export to the belligerents. Norwegian steamship lines cashed in, paying big dividends and purchasing about a million tons of new shipping from the U. S. as German mines and submarines sent 829 Norwegian merchant vessels to the bottom.