Excerpt from Greater France
"During the most trying days of the struggle you never doubted your soldiers," remarked a noted French financier to a world-famous general of France who was inquiring about the possibility of rapid economic recovery. "The signing of the armistice has not ended the war. It has merely transferred the field of battle. Let us have the same confidence in the Worker of France as we all have had in the Soldier of France. He is one and the same man."
France, instead of idling, as some observers have reported after a cursory survey of the country, has accomplished in the last year so stupendous a task that one marvels how the work has been done.
Seventy-six thousand structures had been erected or repaired by the end of August, 1019, and 60,000 additional buildings were then under construction. About 550,000 buildings were destroyed
or damaged during the war. At the same time, 89 per cent, of the destroyed railroad track age had been rebuilt, an area of 1,500 square miles of shell-riddled, tillable land cleared up, 80 million cubic yards of trenches filled,, 991,000 refugees returned to their homes, 5,000 schools reopened, and 3,872 civic communities reorganized.
The surprise attack of the Germans was aimed at the vital parts of French industrial life. The battle zones and the districts occupied by the enemy represented more than 50 per cent, of the nation's coal production, 92 per cent, of the total iron ore output, 81 per cent, of the blast furnaces and 65 per cent, of the steel works. This same territory produced before the war about three-fifths of the total value of French woolen goods, and three-quarters of the French beet sugar crop.
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