he
famous vineyards of this country cover but about four per cent of the
ground. The balance is in forests and streams, highways, canals, and
railways.

When the war broke out there were about four million French families who
owned their homes and a thriftier and more industrious people could
hardly be found. In 1871, when the heartless Bismarck insisted on having
a one billion dollar indemnity, besides the provinces of Alsace and
Lorraine, he thought he had the people of France throttled for a
generation, but to his very great amazement every dollar of this huge
sum was paid in less than three years. This fact is but an indication
that the French are a race of savers.

A silent revolution in the habits of the peasant people has been the
outcome of the war. Ages ago an uprising took the land away from wealthy
owners and gave it to the peasants. A few years later Napoleon had
enacted or rather established a Code by which a man's property was
equally divided between his children. Thus, if a man died leaving four
children and an eight-acre farm, it was divided into four strips of two
acres each. Then, in the course of time, one of these children died
leaving four children, his two-acre farm was divided into four strips of
a half acre each.

Thus a great portion of the land is cut up into little strips and
gardens. Through the intermarriage of children a family might own
several of these strips of land, often miles from each other. This often
brought complications and made it impossible to introduce modern farm
implements and do away with much of the drudgery of peasant life.

This is one advantage that grew out of the war in many places. In the
devastated areas all landmarks were often obliterated and in many cases
the government brought in tractors and plowed great fields which before
the war were hundreds of little farms and gardens. Then, too, many of
these peasants became greedy, selfish individualists. Each man worked by
himself and for himself and the idea of co-operation was almost unknown.
No ordinary farmer ever became able to have modern farm implements
himself and they never dreamed that several of them could go together
and purchase a binder, a thresher or tractor. Their one standby was the
hoe and not only the man but his wife and children often had to work
from daylight until dark to keep the wolf from the door.

Since the war a new day has dawned for the French peasantry. It was very
hard for some of t