(2) This claim for damage to houses is exclusive of furniture and fittings, which are the subject of a separate claim, namely, for 11,417 million gold marks, or about $2,850,000,000. To check this figure let us assume that the whole of the furniture and fittings were destroyed, not only where the houses were destroyed, but also in every case where a house was damaged. This is an overstatement, but we may set it off against the fact that in a good many cases the furniture may have been looted and not recovered by restitution (a large amount has, in fact, been recovered in this way), although the structure of the house was not damaged at all. The total number of houses damaged or destroyed was 590,000. Dividing this into $2,850,000,000, we have an average of nearly $5,000 per house—an average valuation of the furniture and fittings in each peasant’s or collier’s house of nearly $5,000! I hesitate to guess how great an overstatement shows itself here. (3) The largest claim of all, however, is for “industrial damages,” namely, 17,673 million gold marks, or about $4,400,000,000. In 1919 M. Loucheur estimated the cost of reconstruction of the coal mines at 2000 million francs, that is $400,000,000 at the par of exchange.[72] As the pre–war value of all the coal mines in Great Britain was estimated at only $650,000,000, and as the pre–war output of the British mines was fifteen times that of the invaded districts of France, this figure seems high.[73] But even if we accept it, there is still four thousand million dollars to account for. The great textile industries of Lille and Roubaix were robbed of their raw material, but their plant was not seriously injured, as is shown by the fact that in 1920 the woolen industry of these districts was already employing 93.8 per cent and the cotton industry 78.8 per cent of their pre–war personnel. At Tourcoing 55 factories out of 57 were in operation, and at Roubaix 46 out of 48.[74] Altogether 11,500 industrial establishments are said to have been interfered with, but this includes every village workshop, and about three–quarters of them employed less than 20 persons. Half of them were at work again by the spring of 1921. What is the average claim made on their behalf? Deducting the coal mines as above and dividing the total claim by 11,500, we reach an average figure of nearly $35,000. The exaggeration seems _prima facie_ on as high a scale as in the case of houses and furniture.