Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

majority of thinking men will agree that the salvation of the world lies in reconstruction on the old foundations. That is the way we shall go about it. There is no fear that France will be swept away from her moorings. In studying what confronts France we do not need to take into consideration the possibility of a social revolution, partnership in a super-state, or the institution of the era of internationalism in Europe.

The prevalent idea that France has just passed through an ordeal unique in her history and that the nation has never before been called upon to face post-bellum conditions as calamitous and as hopeless as those she faces to-day is wholly wrong. Let us leave to the ignorant and unthinking the belief that our experiences are unlike those of others. Human nature is never called upon to bear more than it can stand or more than previous generations have stood. The Preacher was not mistaken when he said, "There is no new thing under the sun." No historian has been able to refute Vico's theory of cycles. If we want to forecast the reaction of France to the losses and devastation of the recent war, we have every reason to study the periods in her history when through war her fairest provinces were devastated, her economic life ruined, her financial credit impaired, and her soil occupied for a long time by the enemy.

For propaganda purposes during the war it was justifiable to claim that what the Germans did between 1914 and 1919 was worse than anything that ever happened in France and than anything that had been done by other nations at war. When I traveled through the devastated regions of northern France I remembered what I had read of other invasions in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. It was of a extended region that Thomas Basin, Bishop of Lisieux, said:

more

I have seen with my own eyes the fields of Champagne, Brie, Gâtinais, Chartres, Dreux, Maine, and Perche, those of Vexin, Beauvais, from the country of Caux on the Seine up to Amiens, from Senlis, Soissons, Valois, and all the country up to Laon and beyond towards

Hainaut, hideous to look at, devoid of peasants, full of thistles and cactus.

And Jean Juvénal des Ursins, Bishop of Beauvais, wrote to King Charles:

How many churches have been burned! They take the poor farmers, they imprison them, they put them in irons in disgusting places full of vermin. They are freed only after having paid more than they possess. These brigands mistreat also the women and girls. Mills, ovens, cider-presses, every sort of agricultural and household utensil, is ruined or stolen. Alas! Sire, look at your other cities and countries, like Guyenne, Toulouse, Languedoc. Everything is going to destruction and desolation-even to final perdition.

But both bishops lived to write about the wonderful recovery of France after Joan of Arc compelled the English to withdraw from the devastated regions. Peasants and artisans reappeared, when all were thought to be hopelessly dispersed, if not dead; cities were rebuilt; industry, with a fresh impetus, entered into a more flourishing period than France had ever known; commerce, despite currency depreciated to nothing, revived and restored confidence in the coinage; and soon the cultivated lands of the kingdom were a third more than they had ever been. Charles VII became the greatest monarch in Europe. It was a far cry and yet not many years from the day Joan of Arc sought an audience with her dispossessed and discredited sovereign to the time when the Doge of Venice said of the ruler of France that he was "the king of kings without whom nothing could be done in Europe."

To cheer up his compatriots during the war Ernest Lavisse, the aged historian, wrote a detailed account of how France was left after the wars of the Ligue. The period of strife that ended with Henry IV hurt France as much as the Hundred Years' War, but the first ten years of peace brought a change as rapid as that after the English had been driven out. The recovery was not immediate. Prosperity began to set in five years after Henry IV entered Paris. In proportion to the population and wealth of the country, France suffered

more from civil strife at the end of the sixteenth century than from the Germans in the twentieth century. As many as 4000 châteaux and 125,000 houses were burned, and the weaving and silk industries were completely stopped. At Provins, for instance, 4 looms out of 600, and at Tours 200 silk weavers out of 1400, were left. The cities were full of beggars, refugee peasants, and unemployed workmen. In March, 1596, the police of Paris counted nearly 8000 refugees sleeping in one cemetery. In 1597, 150,000 Parisians died of the plague. Etienne Pasquier said that he saw no longer France, but the corpse of France. And yet before the end of his reign Henry IV was able to boast that every peasant could eat chicken on Sunday. In 1598 the Venetian ambassador wrote that France was recovering easily, "just as that had happened several times in the space of a thousand years."

Prince von Bülow has given remarkable testimony of the traditional power of the French to recover after long periods of war and invasion. He declared:

France has an unchangeable faith in the indestructibility of the vital forces of the nation. No people have ever repaired as quickly as the French the results of national catastrophes; no people have found again the same easy self-confidence and the spirit of initiative after cruel misfortune. More than once Europe believed that France had ceased to be dangerous, but each time the French nation confronted Europe again after a short delay with its former vigor or increased strength.

The confidence that we have every reason to feel in the rapid rehabilitation of France is a confidence based not only on the admirable spirit of the French race, but also on the natural resources of France. The country has unrivaled wealth in her soil, her rivers, her outlet to two oceans, with the longest portstudded sea-coast in Europe, and her colonies, the richest of which are very near the mother country. France has the good-will and friendship of the world. And we have to take into consideration the inestimable moral value of the victory and how it was won-a

victory consecrated by the restoration of Alsace and Lorraine.

In the speech at Strasburg that crowned his long career, Premier Clemenceau gave the slogan for the reconstruction era. He said simply, "Work is our salvation." France has already got to work. The record of the year since the armistice is impressive. M. Tardieu has given some of the figures: 2016 kilometers of railway reestablished out of 2246 destroyed; 700 kilometers of canals out of 1075 again in commission; 588 repaired out of 1160 tunnels and bridges blown up; 60,000 houses rebuilt; nearly 1,000,000 acres (one fourth of the total ravished) bearing crops; virtually all the trenches filled in; and 10,000,000 meters of barbed-wire torn up and removed.

To the Ciceronian cry that the republic must not be despaired of the French have answered, Nihil desperandum.

But what confronts France to-day has three elements that are without analogy in past history. Upon the problems arising from German political unity, decreasing birth-rate, and a national debt that threatens bankruptcy, we must concentrate our attention. In examining these three problems, explaining the solutions that are suggested for them, and pointing out how America can aid France in solving two of them, I desire to insist upon the fact that my sources of information are French The French are alive to the serious character of the problems. They have not waited for foreigners to call attention to the danger of failing to solve them promptly. They do not need to be exhorted to confront them resolutely and effectively. No nation in the world knows better than the French that God helps those who help themselves. They proved that during the war.

sources.

Americans and Britishers regard too lightly the effect of the numerical and industrial strength of post-bellum Germany upon the rehabilitation of France. They do not comprehend that her Continental position handicaps France in a way that neither Great Britain nor the United States needs to fear. Writing from Paris during the peace con

ference, I attempted to set forth in THE CENTURY the attitude of France toward peace and to show why it necessarily differed from the attitude of her AngloSaxon allies. As a continental European state having a frontier in common with Germany it is impossible for France to trust her security to the vague and as yet untried formulas of the League of Nations. She must have more positive military guaranties against a renewal of German aggression than are required by the other great powers. Owing to the wanton destruction of her industries, committed by the Germans for the very purpose of putting her out of the running as a competitor in commerce, it is reasonable for her to demand aid and protection against the intact industrial machinery of Germany. Hence the importance of the supplementary treaty with Great Britain and the United States. Hence the insistence of France upon the necessity of inter-Allied control of Germany's export trade until such a time as Germany has made full reparation for the damage done to French industry during the German occupation.

many that we are in dead earnest in our pledge to protect France against military aggression and unfair commercial competition.

None contests the argument that the best solution of this problem is the formation of a society of nations. Then France, no more than any other nation, need fear that she will be left alone to confront an unscrupulous enemy of superior numbers. But the League of Nations is still in the academic stage. The surcharged atmosphere of the Conference of Paris could not have been expected to produce a viable charter for an organization that must in the very nature of things be born of the renunciation of particular interests for the common weal. The "Covenant of the League of Nations" did not have the germ of life in it. In the Treaty of Versailles it was an anomaly. None of my French friends expected the American Senate to accept this covenant without reservation.

M. Eric Sjoestedt, Paris correspondent of the "Dagens Nyheter" of Stockholm, wrote in 1913 a very clever article on what he called the "depopulation scare." Sjoestedt thought the

Until such a time as world-wide public opinion is ready to force statesmen to formulate and adopt an honest and inclusive and effective covenant, the French prefer the joint guaranty of Great Britain and the United States. We can help France best by entering into this guaranty and showing Ger

M.

French were bothering their heads excessively over the failure of the population of France to increase. From the economic point of view France was better off through not increasing her population. He pointed to the competitive industries of England and Germany to prove what happens to nations that multiply too rapidly. The prosperity and tranquillity of France were due to the fact that every one had elbow-room and people could save money and buy land. From a social point of view the limitation of families was a distinct advantage to the well-being of the nation.

Most French economists and publicists were far from accepting these opinions. They looked on the decreasing natality of France as a source of economic and social weakness. They had their grave misgivings about the manner in which French surplus capital was being invested. And they wondered about the military inferiority of France in the face of Germany.

This anxiety was also dismissed lightly by the Swedish journalist. He said:

Remains the military point of view. With her present population France is perfectly able to hold her own against Germany: for nations cannot use their full numerical strength in war. It is physically impossible to put millions of men in the field against each other: they could neither be fed nor directed.

How strange assertions like this read now that we have been through the Great War! Of course the French military authorities were not so unconcerned as M. Sjoestedt. To make up for the inferiority of numbers, the law increasing obligatory service from two to three years was passed just before the war. The invasion of France and the occupation of Belgium and northern

France for more than four years by the Germans, despite Russian and British intervention immediately and Italian and American intervention later, is proof that the possession of a much larger population gives the bigger nation an overwhelming initial advantage that the most closely knit alliances are unable to offset. France now relies upon a defensive alliance with Great Britain and America. But will it not take time to mobilize and train and transport our armies to France? And are we sure of the future tendencies of Russia?

The head-lines of French newspapers and reviews show very clearly that the molders of public opinion are alive to the dangers of the present situation. Glancing through my last mail from France, I find these headings: "France is a dying country," "The decrease of the birth-rate," "The problem of depopulation," "We must increase our birthrate," "Warning-We must look out!" "Let us repeople France," "For large families," "The struggle against depopulation." All tell the same sad tale, statistics, reasons for the evil, dangers that await France, remedies.

In the last normal year before the war (1913) the increase in population per thousand inhabitants in central and western Europe was as follows:

[blocks in formation]

One of the prophets whose voice and pen have warned France of the danger ahead summed up the problem in a single sentence. Said Emile Picard: "At this rate it would require 370 years for our population to double, while Germany in a century has almost tripled her population." A Japanese correspondent writing from Paris put the situation more brutally in the sweeping statement, "Each year the population of France is diminishing: one can therefore reasonably predict that at the end of this century France will, because of this fact, disappear from the list of nations."

If we are inclined to protest against

this startling conclusion, which seems to make hopeless any permanent good arising out of the victory over Germany, there are competent French authorities who are not less positive that France is going to impotence and destruction through the failure to procreate a new generation. In his pastoral letter for Easter, 1917, the Archbishop of Auch wrote that while less than a century ago France was at the head of all the peoples of Europe, to-day she counts for only one tenth. In actual increase of population, counting in all the little countries with a tithe or less than a tithe of her own population, France was sixteenth on the list of the seventeen European countries. M. Paul Bureau of the Catholic University of Paris declares that unless there is a sudden and sweeping change in the demographic charts, the French nation is doomed to extinction. The famous Dr. Bertillon, who has worked for twenty years to arouse the French to the breakers ahead, insists that the crisis is of recent origin. From 1856 to 1866 France averaged 1,000,000 births a year. In proportion to other countries she ought to have had 1,400,000. From 1867 to 1882 the annual increase fluctuated between 1,000,000 and 900,000. The fall in the succeeding decades of the Third Republic was rapid-800,000, 700,000, 600,000.

"We are falling behind now about 500,000 births per year in proportion to other countries," says Dr. Bertillon.

Our death-rate is increasing: each year 300,000 above fifty years are dying. If the birth-rate continues to fall in the same degree, in eighty years there will be no France. Reducing infant mortality is a drop in the bucket. In 1913 only 83,000 babies died. The best of care and skill could hardly have saved a quarter of these. The only remedy for France is to have as many births as other nations.

An analysis of comparative population of France and Germany shows only one fourth more Germans than Frenchmen between forty and fifty, and two fifths more between twenty and forty. But between seventeen and nineteen, and certainly under that age, Germany has more than twice as many males as has France. The losses in the war do

[blocks in formation]

The failure of France to breed a new generation constitutes a military inferiority that no alliances can make up for. The stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles are only temporary. Germany bowed to force. France will not be able to continue to apply that force when the British and American armies are far away and demobilized. The Anglo-American Treaty helps for the time being. France will have a breathing-spell. This will give her time to make children. Make children she must.

France realizes that.

The handicap from depopulation is far greater than military inferiority. Granted that we are able to hold Germany to her promises to limit armies and the manufacture of war materials, we cannot conceive of a larger racial unit being kept under the economic control, or being checked in economic expansion, by a smaller racial unit, especially when the smaller unit is inferior in the tools of production. France must have a large new generation to man her factories, to furnish the home market for manufactured articles, to act as agents for trade abroad.

Decrease in the density of population, or failure to increase the density of population, makes impossible further development of public works, canals, railways, mining and industrial enterprises. Far-seeing Frenchmen do not hesitate to hold up the example of Germany before their compatriots. In 1880, with a population of less than 50,000,000, Germany had an emigration overflow of 200,000 per annum. In 1914, with a population of nearly 70,000,000, emigration had ceased, and from 600,000 to 800,000 foreigners entered Germany every year to work in the fields and in the mines and factories. This refutes the theory that increase in population brings economic and social distress by making work harder to find. Germany was able to increase her indus

tries, her means of transportation, her cities, her agricultural yield, for the very reason that the population grew so rapidly and thus made possible greater collective effort and expenditure. In America we have had the experience of Germany. Our rapid increase of wealth and power is largely due to the rapid increase of population.

Another serious phase of depopulation is its threat to the influence of France overseas. With a colonial empire second only to that of Great Britain and mostly won since the population of France became stationary, the French have been able to carry on and expand up to this point only because the flower of France felt the sacred call to a military career. I have had the fortune to live in intimate association with many men of my own age and older in France. It is a generation born between 1850 and 1880. In other circumstances than those of the humiliating defeat and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, very many of these men, the men who have made possible the colonial success of France, would not have chosen a military career. It has been difficult enough to get civil administrators for the French colonies. Of bona fide colonists there have been very few. Now that the military incentive may be lacking, how can France hope to induce her good men, or even enough men, to enter the colonial career? There is no inducement of caste. Remains the reason that has sent Britons overseas, surplus population. The present conditions may be maintained in the French colonies for a decade or two, but that is the limit. Eventually there must be more Frenchmen or there will be fewer colonies.

Qualified French observers are virtually unanimous in denying that the reason for a low birth-rate is the general economic reason given to explain smaller families the world over. In the upper classes the economic reason may be true, as it is in other countries. But France is the last country in Europe to be able to advance this reason as applicable to the mass of her population. For France has greater natural wealth and a better distribution of land and affords more opportunities for making a living than any other European country

« AnkstesnisTęsti »