easing, while the annual number of deaths has been
more or less increasing. Over a great part of the country the number
of deaths annually exceeds the number of births. In numerous years
this is so for the whole country. The birth rate is the lowest in
Europe. The death rate, while not the highest, is yet higher than in
many other countries. As a consequence of all this the population of
France is almost stationary. During the last seventy years it has
increased only 18 per cent., while that of Great Britain has increased
63 per cent., Germany 75 per cent., Russia 92 per cent., and Europe as
a whole 62 per cent. And even this increase, small as it is, is
largely due to immigration from other countries. Nor is the emigration
of Frenchmen to their colonies or to other countries to be set down as
a sufficient explanation. The French are averse to emigration. At the
present time the number of Frenchmen residing abroad is only a little
more than half a million, while of foreigners residing in France the
number is not far short of a million and a quarter.

[Illustration: France, compared in size with the States of Illinois
and Texas.]

THE FRENCH A THRIFTY, FRUGAL PEOPLE

When France is compared with other countries in respect of commercial
development and progress, the results will in almost every particular
turn out unfavourable to France. For example, since the close of the
Napoleonic wars eighty-three years ago the national trade of Great
Britain has quadrupled, while that of France has only trebled. At the
close of the Franco-German war France was eighteen per cent. ahead of
Germany in the carrying power of her shipping. Now Germany is seventy
per cent. ahead of France in that respect. But it must be remembered
that the Franco-German war cost France in army expenses and in
indemnity no less a sum than $3,250,000,000. The effect of that
tremendous expenditure upon the prosperity of the nation can be
estimated by one comparison. Since that war the annual average savings
per inhabitant in France have been $17. For the same period the annual
average savings per inhabitant in Great Britain have been $19.50. Had
that war not occurred the average annual savings per inhabitant in
France would have been $21.50. In short, no people in Europe are
comparable with the working classes of the French people in frugality
and thrift, and because of this characteristic, if France were well
governed, its prosperity would be equal to that