Peace was at last signed, not on the basis of the Fourteen Points nor yet entirely on the lines of territorial equilibrium, but on those of a compromise which, missing the advantages of each, combined many of the evils of both and of others which were generated by their conjunction, and laid the foundations of the new state fabric on quick-sands.  That was at bottom the view to which Italy, Rumania, and Greece gave utterance when complaining that their claims were being dealt with on the principle of self-denial, whereas those of France had been settled on the traditional basis of territorial guaranties and military alliances.  Further, the Treaty failed to lay an ax to the roots of war, did, in fact, increase their number while purporting to destroy them.  Far from that:  germs of future conflicts not only between the late belligerents, but also between the recent Allies, were plentifully scattered and may sprout up in the fullness of time.

The Paris press expressed its satisfaction with France’s share of the fruits of victory.  For the provisions of the Treaty went as far as any merely political arrangement could go to check the natural inequality, numerical, economical, industrial, and financial, between the Teuton and French peoples.  To many this problem seemed wholly insoluble, because its solution involved a suspension or a corrective of a law of nature.  Take the birth-rate in France, for example.  Before the war it had long been declining at a rate which alarmed thoughtful French patriots.  And, according to official statistics, it is falling off still more rapidly to-day, whereas the increase in other countries is greater than ever before.[301] Thus, whereas in the year 1911 there were 73,599 births in the Seine Department, there were only 47,480 in 1918.  Wet nurses, too, are disappearing.  Of these, in the year 1911, in the same territory there were 1,363, but in 1918 only 65.  The mortality among foundlings rose from 5 per cent. before the war to 40 per cent. in the year 1918.[302] M. Bertillon calculates that for France to increase merely at the same rate as other nations—­not to recover the place among them which she has already lost, but only to keep her present one—­she needs five hundred thousand more births than are registered at present.  A statistical table which he drew up of the birth-rate of four European nations during five decades, beginning with the year 1861, is unpleasant reading[303] for the friends of that heroic and artistic people.  France, containing in round numbers 40,000,000 inhabitants, ought to increase annually by 500,000.  Before the war the total number of births in Germany was computed at one million nine hundred and fifty thousand, but hardly more than one million of the children born were viable.[304] The general conclusion to be drawn from these figures and from the circumstances that the falling off in the French population still goes on unchecked, is disquieting for those who desire to