DECREASING POPULATION OF FRANCE 247 



THE DECREASING POPULATION OF FRANCE 



By Pbofessor JAMES W. GARNER 



THE DNIVEBSITX OF ILLINOIS 



I. The Present Status of the Population 



ONE of the leading newspapers of France, in an editorial in Feb- 

 ruary, 1912, declared that the day on which the results of the 

 next quinquennial census were known would be one of national mourn- 

 ing for the people of France. The Parisian journals in commenting 

 on the census returns when they were made public in May, 1912, char- 

 acterized the conditions which they revealed by such terms as "de- 

 plorable," " profoundly desolating," " extremely disquieting," " lament- 

 able" and "dolorous." The prevailing tone of their comments was as 

 if the country had experienced some great calamity or had suffered a 

 national bereavement. So profoundly impressed was the government 

 that it proceeded at once to appoint an extra-parliamentary commission 

 (the second since 1902), to "investigate the question of depopulation, 

 and to recommend measures for combatting the evils which threaten 

 the extinction of the nation." M. Klotz, minister of finance, in his ad- 

 dress to the commission, urged upon it the necessity of prosecuting its 

 investigations with celerity, for, he said, " depopulation is no longer a 

 vague menace to our country; it is a national danger, at once pressing 

 and immediate, and one which demands rapid and efficient measures." 

 M. Leon Bourgeois, addressing the Congress for Social Hygiene about 

 the same time, spoke in a similar tone, declaring that France was threat- 

 ened with two dangers, one foreign and one domestic. "While she was 

 prepared to make any sacrifice, he said, for the cause of national de- 

 fense, she must also consider seriously the danger with which the coun- 

 try is confronted by the decline of the birth-rate and the comparatively 

 high rate of mortality among the French people. Speaking before the 

 same congress, Senator Eibot, a former premier, declared that " our 

 people must be instructed in the perils that menace us ; it will require 

 all the resources and strength of the government to combat success- 

 fully the dangers which now imperil the very existence of the French 

 people." No one can read the comments of the statistical experts, 

 sociologists, economists and publicists on the census returns of 1911 

 without feeling that the nation is really alarmed at the seriousness of 

 the danger with which it is confronted. The census revealed the fact 

 that in 64 of the 87 departments into which France is divided the pop- 

 ulation had decreased during the past five years and that the number 



