The fluctuations of fortune in Europe 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 Belgium.  In Germany it was 1,916,000.  The average of deaths was 729,000 in France, 117,000 in Belgium, and 1,073,000 in Germany.  Thus, per thousand, the excess of births in France was 0.9, in Belgium 7.7, in Germany 13.  The War has terribly aggravated the situation in France, whose demographic structure is far from being a healthy one.  From statistics published giving the first results of the French census of 1921—­without the new territory of Alsace-Lorraine—­France, in the interval between the two census periods, has decreased by 2,102,864; from 39,602,258 to 37,499,394 (1921).  The deaths in the War do not represent a half of this decrease, when is deducted the losses among the coloured troops and those from French colonies who fought for France.  The new territories annexed to France do not compensate for the War-mortality and the decrease in births.