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,