THE STATIONARY POPULATION OF FRANCE
Germany and France have happily settled their differences in regard to Morocco; but the German chancellor is charged in his own country with yielding not to France, but to Great Britain. France, which a hundred years ago lorded it over the Germanic nations and forty years ago believed that its military forces were superior to those of the German empire, has now almost lost its place among the great nations of Europe. Paris is nearly the same city it was forty years ago; Berlin is a new city. This alteration in the position of France is due to its stationary population. At the end of the last century the population of France formed one quarter of that of the civilized powers of the world, while at present it has fallen to seven per cent.
This state of affairs is causing much anxiety in France; it is discussed in detail in a recent book by Dr. Jacques Bertillon, chief of statistics for the city of Paris. The data which he reviews in detail deserve consideration not so much because, as he claims, they are peculiar to France, but rather because France has been first to exhibit a state of affairs likely soon to be evident everywhere. The charts here reproduced show the birth rates and death rates of four nations during the second half of the nineteenth century and the birth rates in the different regions of France for the first and last decades of the nineteenth century. It is almost incredible that there should be departments in which there are three deaths for every two births. In Lot the population has in the course of twenty years decreased from 271,514 to 216,611.
