of the battle line, but also on account
of the immensely deeper area of country over which the battle swayed
from time to time. It is a popular delusion to think of Belgium as the
principal victim of the war; it will turn out, I believe, that taking
account of casualties, loss of property and burden of future debt,
Belgium has made the least relative sacrifice of all the belligerents
except the United States. Of the Allies, Serbia's sufferings and loss
have been proportionately the greatest, and after Serbia, France. France
in all essentials was just as much the victim of German ambition as was
Belgium, and France's entry into the war was just as unavoidable.
France, in my judgment, in spite of her policy at the Peace Conference,
a policy largely traceable to her sufferings, has the greatest claims on
our generosity.

The special position occupied by Belgium in the popular mind is due, of
course, to the fact that in 1914 her sacrifice was by far the greatest
of any of the Allies. But after 1914 she played a minor role.
Consequently, by the end of 1918, her relative sacrifices, apart from
those sufferings from invasion which cannot be measured in money, had
fallen behind, and in some respects they were not even as great, for
example, as Australia's. I say this with no wish to evade the
obligations towards Belgium under which the pronouncements of our
responsible statesmen at many different dates have certainly laid us.
Great Britain ought not to seek any payment at all from Germany for
herself until the just claims of Belgium have been fully satisfied. But
this is no reason why we or they should not tell the truth about the
amount.

While the French claims are immensely greater, here too there has been
excessive exaggeration, as responsible French statisticians have
themselves pointed out. Not above 10 per cent of the area of France was
effectively occupied by the enemy, and not above 4 per cent lay within
the area of substantial devastation. Of the sixty French towns having a
population exceeding 35,000, only two were destroyed--Reims (115,178)
and St. Quentin (55,571); three others were occupied--Lille, Roubaix,
and Douai--and suffered from loot of machinery and other property, but
were not substantially injured otherwise. Amiens, Calais, Dunkerque, and
Boulogne suffered secondary damage by bombardment and from the air; but
the value of Calais and Boulogne must have been increased by the new
works of various kinds er