Add to
that seven departments, roughly 20,000 square kilometers in area,
which have been invaded, devastated, ruined and pillaged. In these
seven departments all the machinery, all the raw materials, all the
merchandise, all the furniture even to the door-knobs and the boards
in the floors have been taken away. These departments were among the
richest and most prosperous of those on which France prided herself
most industrially.
Add to that the cultivation that has been destroyed, the soil that has
been made untillable, the trees that have been cut down, the roads
that have been torn up and the bridges that have been destroyed. All
the misery, all the mourning, all the sickness: a million wounded and
injured men who have been lost as living forces by a nation which did
not have too many inhabitants. Add the hundred thousand prisoners
Germany sends back to us who have been made tuberculous, paralytics,
nervous wrecks or lunatics because they have been physically
maltreated. Yes, France is suffering.
But it is not true that she is worn out. It is not true that she is
bled white. The horrible hope Germany had formed of emptying France of
her strength, of leaving her, fighting for breath and conquered,
beaten to the earth for centuries to come, has not been realized.
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