rope show for all her peoples a
succession of victories and defeats. There are no peoples always
victorious. After having, under Napoleon I, humiliated Germany, France
saw the end of her imperialistic dream, and later witnessed the ruin
of Napoleon III. She has suffered two great defeats, and then, when
she stood diminished in stature before a Germany at the top of her
fortune, she, together with the Allies, has had a victory over an
enemy who seemed invincible.

But no one can foresee the future. To have conveyed great nuclei of
German populations to the Slav States, and especially to Poland; to
have divided the Magyars, without any consideration for their fine
race, among the Rumanians, Czeko-Slovaks and the Jugo-Slavs; to have
used every kind of violence with the Bulgars; to have offended Turkey
on any and every pretext; to have done this is not to have guaranteed
the victory and the peace.

Russia sooner or later will recover. It is an illusion to suppose that
Great Britain, France and Italy can form an agreement to regulate the
new State or new States that will arise in Russia. There are too many
tendencies and diverse interests. Germany, too, will reconstruct
herself after a series of sorrows and privations, and no one can say
how the Germans will behave. Unless a policy of peace and social
renovation be shaped and followed, our sons will witness scenes much
more terrible than those which have horrified our generation and upset
our minds even more than our interests.

Meanwhile, in spite of the frightful increase of scrofula, rickets
and tuberculosis, from which the conquered peoples are principally
suffering, the march of the nations will proceed according to the laws
which have hitherto ruled them and on which our limited action can
only for brief periods cause small modifications or alterations.

Demographic forecasts, like all forecasts of social events, have but
a comparative value. It is true that demographic movements are
especially biological manifestations, but it is also true that
economic and social factors exercise a profound influence in limiting
their regularity and can disturb them very considerably. It is better
therefore not to make long prophecies.

What is certain is that the French population has increased almost
imperceptibly while the population of Germany augmented very rapidly.
The annual average of births in the five years before the War,
1908-13, was 762,000 in France and 176,000 in