But here stands the Chief Victim of the war--and to the Chief Victim belongs of right the chief and first place in men's thoughts, and in the settlement.

Do not allow us even to _begin_ to ask ourselves whether, after all, we have not paid too much for the alliance we gloried in ?" Some such temper as this has been showing itself since the New Year, in the discontent of the French Press, in the irritation of French talk and correspondence.

And, of course, behind the bewildered and almost helpless consciousness of such a loss in accumulated wealth as no other European country has ever known before, there is the ever-burning sense of the human loss which so heavily deepens and complicates the material loss.

One of the French Ministers has lately said that France has lost three millions of population, men, women, and children, through the war.

The fighting operations alone have cost her over a million and a half, at least, of the best manhood of France and her Colonies.