The Dwindling Population of France.

Manawatu Herald, 12 April 1898, Page 2

The Dwindling Population of France.

" Th»^ Depopulation nf France " is the title of a paper which Adolph Jensen con fcri bates to the Swedish magazine " Tilskueren." It was

Jacques Beriillion, the statistician, who prophesied darkly that in half a century the nation would be dead, and though a statistician's province is the province of facts and not of hypotheses, yet the situation, says Herr Jenseu, tempts the mind to question what the future consequence will be, and the answer can only paint it in the darkest colours. One may preach early and late, found societies, make laws to promote the increase of the nation, but it will be long before the end is attained. The " system " has struck too deep a root, and generations will live and die before the nation will have regained what it has for oenturies been losing in moral and physical power. Briefly, while European Russia will need only forty-five years or bo, Germany about 84 years, AustriaHungary 70 years, England 80 years, Italy 110 years, it will take France over 860 years to double it population ! What signifies the loss of Alsace-Lorraine's million and a half of souls compared with the loss France suffers every day? In the last five years the German population has increased by three millions, who are every one fully German : France meanwhile baa only increased her people by 175,000, who are not even of French nationality. The increase of an nation is of the utmost importance to the success of its country. It has meant much in the nineteenth century ; it will mean more in the twentieth. England, Germany, aye, even Italy, have millions of representatives on foreign soil ; Francs has none, or too few to signify. The Gallic race have felt it and will in the future learn more bitterly still the truth of the proverb, 11 The absent are ever in the wrong."