(4) The remaining item of importance is for unbuilt–on land. The claim under this head is for 9850 million gold marks, or about $2,460,000,000. M. Tardieu (_op. cit._, p. 347) quotes Mr. Lloyd George as follows, in the course of a discussion during the Peace Conference in which he was pointing out the excessive character of the French claims: “If you had to spend the money which you ask for the reconstruction of the devastated regions of the North of France, I assert that you could not manage to spend it. Besides, the land is still there. Although it has been badly upheaved in parts, it has not disappeared. Even if you put the Chemin des Dames up to auction, you would find buyers.” Mr. Lloyd George’s view has been justified by events. In April 1921 the French Prime Minister was able to tell his Senate that 95 per cent of the cultivable land had been releveled and that 90 per cent had been plowed and was producing crops. Some go so far as to maintain that the fertility of the soil has been actually improved by the disturbance of its surface and by its lying fallow for several years. But apart from its having proved easier than was anticipated to make good this category of damage, the total cultivated area (excluding woodland) of the whole of the eleven Departments affected was about 6,650,000 acres, of which 270,000 acres were in the “zone of destruction,” 2,000,000 acres in the “zone of trenches and bombardment,” and 4,200,000 acres in the “zone of simple occupation.” The claim, therefore, averaged _over the whole area_, works out at about $370 per acre and, averaged over the first two categories above, at more than $1000 per acre. This claim, though it is described as being in respect of unbuilt–on land, probably includes farm buildings (other than houses), implements, live stock, and the growing crops of August 1914. As experience has proved that the permanent qualities of the land have only been seriously impaired over a small area, these latter items should probably constitute the major part of the claim. We have also to allow for destruction of woodlands. But even with high estimates for each of these items, I do not see how we could reach a total above a third of the amount actually claimed. These arguments are not exact, but they are sufficiently so to demonstrate that the claim sent in to the Reparation Commission is untenable. I believe that it is at least four times the truth. But it is possible that I have overlooked some items of claim, and it is better in discussions of this kind to leave a wide margin for possible error. I assert, therefore, that on the average the claim is not less than two or three times the truth.