This total is one which I believe to be a vast, indeed a fantastic, exaggeration beyond anything which it would be possible to justify under cross–examination. At the date when I wrote _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, exact statistics as to the damage done were not available, and it was only possible to fix a maximum limit to a reasonable claim, having regard to the pre–war wealth of the invaded districts. Now, however, much more detail is available with which to check the claim. The following particulars are quoted from a statement made by M. Briand in the French Senate on April 6, 1921, supplemented by an official memorandum published a few days later, and represent the position at about that date:[68] (1) The population inhabiting the devastated districts in April 1921 was 4,100,000, as compared with 4,700,000 in 1914. (2) Of the cultivable land 95 per cent of the surface had been releveled and 90 per cent had been plowed and was producing crops. (3) 293,733 houses were totally destroyed, in replacement of which 132,000 provisional dwellings of different kinds had been erected. (4) 296,502 houses were partially destroyed, of which 281,300 had been repaired. (5) Fifty per cent of the factories were again working. (6) Out of 2404 kilometers of railway destroyed, practically the whole had been reconstructed. It seems, therefore, that, apart from refurnishing and from the rebuilding of houses and factories, the greater part of which had still to be accomplished, the bulk of the devastation was already made good out of the daily labor of France within two years of the Peace Conference, before Germany had paid anything. This is a great achievement,—one more demonstration of the riches accruing to France from the patient industry of peasants, which makes her one of the rich countries of the world, in spite of the corrupt Parisian finance which for a generation past has wasted the savings of her investors. When we look at Northern France we see what honest Frenchmen can accomplish.[69] But when we turn to the money claims which are based on this, we are back in the atmosphere of Parisian finance,—so grasping, faithless, and extravagantly unveracious as to defeat in the end its own objects. For let us compare some of these items of devastation with the claims lodged.