| Churches. | Municipal Buildings. | Schools. | Post Offices. | Hospitals. | |
| Destroyed | 1,407 | 1,415 | 2,243 | 171 | 30 |
| Damaged | 2,079 | 2,154 | 3,153 | 271 | 197 |
| Restored | 1,214 | 322 | 720 | 53 | 28 |
| Temporarily patched up | 1,097 | 931 | 2,093 | 196 | 128 |
Cultivated Land
| Acres. | ||
| At the Armistice: | Totally destroyed | 4,653,516 |
| By July 1921: | Leveled | 4,067,408 |
| Plowed | 3,528,950 | |
Live Stock
| 1914. | Nov. 1918. | July 1921. | |
| Cattle | 890,084 | 57,500 | 478,000 |
| Horses, donkeys, and mules | 412,730 | 32,600 | 235,400 |
| Sheep and goats | 958,308 | 69,100 | 276,700 |
| Pigs | 357,003 | 25,000 | 169,000 |
[70] Even if we assumed that every house which had been injured at all was totally destroyed, the figure would work out at about $7,000.
[71] M. Brenier, who has spent much time criticizing me, quotes with approval (The Times, January 24, 1921) a French architect as estimating the cost of reconstruction at an average of $2,500 per house, and quotes also, without dissent, a German estimate that the pre–war average was $1,200. He also states, in the same article, that the number of houses destroyed was 304,191 and the number damaged 290,425, or 594,616 in all. Having pointed out the importance of not overlooking sentiment in these questions, he then multiplies $2,500, not by the number of houses but by the number of the population, and arrives at an answer of $3,750,000,000. What is one to reply to sentimental multiplication? What is the courteous retort to controversy on these lines? (His other figures are clearly such a mass of misprints, muddled arithmetic, confusion between hectares and acres and the like, that, whilst an attack could easily make a devastated area of them, it would be unfair to base any serious criticism on this well–intentioned farrago. As a writer on these topics, M. Brenier is about of the caliber of M. Raphaël–Georges Lévy.)
[72] M. Tardieu states that, on account of the subsequent rise in prices, M. Loucheurʼs estimate has proved, in terms of paper francs, to be inadequate. But this is allowed for by my having converted paper francs into dollars at the par of exchange.
[73] The Lens coal mines, which were the object of most complete destruction, comprised 29 pits, and had, in 1913, 16,000 workmen with an output of 4 million tons.
[74] I take these figures from M. Tardieu, who argues, most illuminatingly, in alternate chapters, according to his thesis for the time being, that reconstruction has hardly begun, and that it is nearly finished.