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 erected for the use of the British Army.

The Annuaire Statistique de la France, 1917, values the entire house property of France at $11,900,000,000 (59.5 milliard francs).[84] An estimate current in France of $4,000,000,000 (20 milliard francs) for the destruction of house property alone is, therefore, obviously wide of the mark.[85] $600,000,000 at pre-war prices, or say $1,250,000,000 at the present time, is much nearer the right figure.  Estimates of the value of the land of France (apart from buildings) vary from $12,400,000,000 to $15,580,000,000, so that it would be extravagant to put the damage on this head as high as $500,000,000.  Farm Capital for the whole of France has not been put by responsible authorities above $2,100,000,000.[86] There remain the loss of furniture and machinery, the damage to the coal-mines and the transport system, and many other minor items.  But these losses, however serious, cannot be reckoned in value by hundreds of millions of dollars in respect of so small a part of France.  In short, it will be difficult to establish a bill exceeding $2,500,000,000 for physical and material damage in the occupied and devastated areas of Northern France.[87] I am confirmed in this estimate by the opinion of M. Rene Pupin, the author of the most comprehensive and scientific estimate of the pre-war wealth of France,[88] which I did not come across until after my own figure had been arrived at.  This authority estimates the material losses of the invaded regions at from $2,000,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 (10 to 15 milliards),[89] between which my own figure falls half-way.