(1) 293,733 houses were totally destroyed and 296,502 were partially destroyed. Since nearly all the latter have been repaired, we shall not be underestimating the damage in assuming, for the purposes of a rough comparison, that, on the average, the damaged houses were _half_ destroyed, which gives us altogether the equivalent of 442,000 houses totally destroyed. Turning back, we find that the French Government’s claim for damage to houses was 16,768 million gold marks, that is to say $4,192,000,000. Dividing this sum by the number of houses, we find an average claim of $9,480, per house![70] This is a claim for what were chiefly peasants’ and miners’ cottages and the tenements of small country towns. M. Tardieu has quoted M. Loucheur as saying that the houses in the Lens–Courrières district were worth 5000 francs ($1000) a–piece before the war, but would cost 15,000 francs to rebuild after the war, which sounds not at all unreasonable. In April 1921 the cost of building construction in Paris (which had been a good deal higher some months before) was estimated to be, in terms of paper francs, three and a half times the pre–war figure.[71] But even if we take the cost in francs at five times the pre–war figure, namely 25,000 paper francs per house, the claim lodged by the French Government is still three and a half times the truth. I fancy that the discrepancy, here and also under other heads, may be partly explained by the inclusion in the official French claim of indirect damages, namely, for loss of rent—_perte de loyer_. It does not appear what attitude the Reparation Commission took up towards _indirect_ pecuniary and business losses arising in the devastated districts out of the war. But I do not think that such claims are admissible under the Treaty. Such losses, real though they were, were not essentially different from analogous losses occurring in other areas, and indeed throughout the territory of the Allies. The maximum claim, however, on this head would not go far towards justifying the above figure, and we can allow a considerable margin of error for such additional items without impairing the conclusion that the claim is exaggerated. In _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_ (p. 127) I estimated that $1,250,000,000 might be a fair estimate for damage to house property; and I still think that this was about right.