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. France always stands upright, her arm is still strong, her muscles vigorous and her blood rich.
To destroy the lie that France is bled white, we must let figures, facts, statistics and definite proofs speak. The public shall judge for itself....
A nation that is worn out and bled white has no army to defend itself. France not only still has an army, but she has an army that is numerically and materially stronger than it was at the war's beginning. In 1914, at the Marne, France had an army of 1,500,000 men; today, after four years of war, France has on her battle front, in the war zone, an army of 2,750,000 men.
But the value of fighting men today lies only in the artillery they have to support them behind the lines. It lies in the shells the artillery is able to fire, in all that material that makes up the sinews of war of the present day. Here we find the most extraordinary and marvelous effort that history records. France, invaded, occupied, weakened; France that had no munitions industry prior to 1914--or a small munitions industry at best--that France has built up a war industry that is doubtless the best in the world, which is equal to the German war industry and on which the Allies can draw in the common cause.
Listen to these figures and keep them in your heads. They are vouched for by M. Millerand, who was minister of war during the first year of hostilities: