IV

THE REPAKA TION BILL

111

houses damaged or destroyed was 590,000. Dividingthis into £700,000,000 sterling, we have an averageof £1180 per house—an average valuation of thefurniture and fittings in each peasant's or collier'shouse of more than £1000 ! I hesitate to guess howgreat an overstatement shows itself here.

(3) The largest claim of all, however, is for " in-dustrial damages," namely, 17,673 million gold marks,or about £1,060,000,000 sterling. In 1919 M. Lou-cheur estimated the cost of reconstruction of the coalmines at 2000 million francs, that is £80,000,000 atthe par of exchange. 1 As the pre-war value of allthe coal mines in Great Britain was estimated atonly £130,000,000, and as the pre-war output of theBritish mines was fifteen times that of the invadeddistricts of France, this figure seems high. 2 But evenif we accept it, there is still nearly a thousand millionssterling to account for. The great textile industriesof Lille and Roubaix were robbed of their raw material,but their plant was not seriously injured, as isshown by the fact that in 1920 the woollen industryof these districts was already employing 93-8 percent and the cotton industry 78-8 per cent of theirpre-war personnel. At Tourcoing 55 factories out

1 M. Tardieu states that, on account of the subsequent rise in prices,M. Loucheur's estimate has proved, in terms of paper francs, to be inadequate.But this is allowed for by my having converted paper francs into sterlingat the par of exchange.

2 The Lens coal mines, which were the object of most complete de-struction, comprised 29 pits, and had, in 1913, 16,000 workmen with anoutput of 4 million tons.