[26] See quotations in Addendum.
[27] Cmd. 280 (1919), p. 15.
[28] The dilemma is not, of course, as absolute, as this query would suggest. What I am trying to make perfectly clear here is the kind of problem that faces us rather than the precise degree of its difficulty. My own view is that after much suffering especially to the children, and the reduction during a generation or two, perhaps, of the physical standard of the race, the German population will find a way round the sustenance difficulty. For one thing, France needs German coke quite as badly as Germany needs French ore, and this common need may be made the basis of a bargain. But though Germany may be able to surmount the difficulties created for her by her victors, it is those difficulties which will constitute her grievance, and will present precisely the kind, if not the degree, of injustice here indicated.
[29] One very commonly sees the statement that France had no adequate resources in iron ore before the War. This is an entire mistake, as the Report of the Commission appointed by the Minister of Munitions to visit Lorraine (issued July, 1919), points out (p. 11.):—‘Before the War the resources of Germany of iron ore were 3,600,000,000 tons and those of France 3,300,000,000.’ What gave Germany the advantage was the possession not of greater ore resources than France, but of coal suitable for furnace coke, and this superiority in coal will still remain even after the Treaty, although the paralysis of transport and other indispensable factors may render the superiority valueless. The report just quoted says:—‘It is true that Germany will want iron ore from Lorraine (in 1913 she took 14,000,000 tons from Briey and 18,500,000 tons from Lorraine), but she will not be so entirely dependent upon this one source of supply as the Lorraine works will be upon Germany for coke, unless some means are provided to enable Lorraine to obtain coke from elsewhere, or to produce her own needs from Saar coal and imported coking coal.’ The whole report seems to indicate that the mise en valeur of France’s new ‘property’ depends upon supplies of German coal—to say nothing of the needs of a German market and the markets depending on that market. As it is, the Lorraine steel works are producing nothing like their full output because of the inability of Germany to supply furnace coke, owing largely to the Westphalian labour troubles and transport disorganisation. Whether political passion will so far subside as to enable the two countries to come to a bargain in the matter of exchange of ore or basic pig-iron for furnace coke, remains to be seen. In any case one may say that the ore-fields of Lorraine will only be of value to France provided that much of their product is returned to Germany and used for the purpose of giving value to German coal.
[30] From the summary of a series of lectures on the Biology of Death, as reported in the Boston Herald of December 19th., 1920.
[31] A recent book on the subject, summing up the various recommendations made in France up to 1918 for increasing the birth-rate is La Natalité: ses Lois Economiques et Psychologiques, by Gaston Rageot.
The present writer remembers being present ten years before the War at a Conference at the Sorbonne on this subject. One of the lecturers summarised all the various plans that had been tried to increase the birth-rate. ‘They have all failed,’ he concluded, ‘and I doubt if anything remains to be done.’ And one of the savants present added: ‘Except to applaud.’
[32] Mr William Harbutt Dawson gives the figures as follows:—
‘The decline in the birth-rate was found to have become a settled factor in the population question.... The birth-rate for the whole Empire reached the maximum figure in 1876, when it stood at 41.0 per 1000 of the population.... Since 1876 the movement has been steadily downward, with the slightest possible break at the beginning of the ‘nineties.... Since 1900 the rate has decreased as follows:—
| 1900 | 35.6 per | 1000. |
| 1901 | 35.7 per | “ |
| 1902 | 35.1 per | “ |
| 1903 | 33.9 per | “ |
| 1904 | 34.1 per | 1000. |
| 1905 | 33.0 per | “ |
| 1906 | 33.1 per | “ |