theo đặc điểm cá nhân của tôi, khập khiễng, nhưng tiền cung cấp dịch vụ với 24 feet. Vì vậy, tôi không què. Tôi xấu, không trung thực, vô đạo đức, ngu ngốc, nhưng tiền là vinh dự, và do đó sở hữu của nó. Tiền là lợi ích tối cao, do đó sở hữu của nó là tốt. Tiền bạc, bên cạnh đó, tiết kiệm cho tôi những rắc rối của không trung thực: Vì vậy tôi cho là trung thực. Tôi óc, nhưng | THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE 14 chapter had been closed in the secular struggle between the glories of Germany and of France. Prudence required some measure of lip service to the ideals of foolish Americans and hypocritical Englishmen but it would be stupid to believe that there is much room in the world as it really is for such affairs as the League of Nations or any sense in the principle of self-determination except as an ingenious formula for rearranging the balance of power in one s own interests. These however are generalities. In tracing the practical details of the peace which he thought necessary for the power and the security of France we must go back to the historical causes which had operated during his lifetime. Before the Franco-German war the populations of France and Germany were approximately equal but the coal and iron and shipping of Germany were in their infancy and the wealth of France was greatly superior. Even after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine there was no great discrepancy between the real resources of the two countries. But in the intervening period the relative position had changed completely. By 1914 the population of Germany was nearly seventy per cent in excess of that of France she had become one of the first manufacturing and trading nations of the world her technical skill and her means for the production of future wealth were unequalled. France on the other hand had a stationary or declining population and relatively to others had fallen seriously behind in wealth and in the power to produce it. In spite therefore of France s victorious issue from the present struggle with the aid this time of England and America her future position remained precarious in the eyes of one who took the view that European civil war is to be regarded as a normal or at least a recurrent state of affairs for the future and that the sort of conflicts between organised Great Powers which have occupied the past hundred years will also engage the .
