It would be a bad policy even to touch the Balkans, for such interference would sooner or later bring Russia back to the Balkans, and the peoples there, menaced in their independence by us, would turn to Russia. We would thus place nations used to independence under alien rule, and such an act would neither be a wise nor a paying policy. As regards Italy, Count Andrassy has also a solution which is quite generous. He says: We would not do well if we were influenced by just revenge and turned our eyes on Italian territory. To force territory from a country whose people are so patriotic would be a source of weakness on our part. In the worst case, only boundary corrections can be thought of, and no conquest. Italy must recompense us by money and not territory, for not the Italian people, but its Government, committed a breach of faith against us. France's Bill of Damages The agricultural problem in France is the subject of an article by Professor Daniel Zolla in La Revue Hebdomadaire (Paris). Professor Zolla is a leader in the agricultural school at Grignon, and the main part of his article is a discussion of France's agricultural losses and how to repair them. He sums the present situation as follows: At the end of May the enemy were occupying territory amounting to about two million hectares. In this zone as in the regions invaded though immediately evacuated, the agricultural losses have been admittedly severe: harvests, livestock, implements, fodder, have been stolen or destroyed; the buildings, burned or ruined, will have to be entirely rebuilt. The soil itself, ploughed with trenches, dug up by shells, infested with weeds, has lost much of its fertility.... In the invaded region which is one of the richest and most fertile in all France, the farming capital amounts at the least to five hundred francs per hectare, not counting the value of the buildings and of the land itself. For a total of two million hectares, the sum thus represented in the personal advances of farmers reach or surpass a billion, for in French Flanders and in Artois this minimum estimate of five hundred francs is greatly exceeded. Concerning future indemnification for these losses, Professor Zolla writes: It is the entire country at which the enemy wished to strike by ruining a certain number of the people; it is the country which should repair the ruin and indemnify the losses. Never will the principle of national solidarity apply with more justice and reason. The interest of the state can demand, it is true, that the victim who has become a creditor of the country shall not exact immediate payment of the sums due him. This is a question of the time needed to enable the country to pay and the representatives of the nation must be the judges of that.