The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-05-18
FEARS HUNS WILL
 PAY TOO LIGHTLY Prof. Dubois Has Made De- tailed Report on Destruc-
 tiOn in Northern France
By A.,ooI.ssd Pres.

Paris, March 27-'I am afraid the peace
 conference is going to let the boches off
 too easily" said Prof. Louis Dubois,
 deputy for the department of the Seine, to
 the Associated Press today. Professor
 Dubois has made a special study of the
 economic situation in northern France
 produced by the destructive ingenuity Of
 the Germans. He has submitted to the
 Chamber of Deputies a detailed report
 of his findings.
 Are the Germans to be spared%' he
 asked with their industries unimpaired
 they will have seized the markets long before we are ready to compete with them. If only President Wilson would come and see with his own eyes what utter ruin
 and destruction they have brought upon
 our unhappy land.
 "One has to see the destruction with ones own eyes, he went on. Much has been cleaned up already. With devilish ingenuity the Germans made speciality of destroying the essential things. They even had a machine specially devised to destroy railway points. General Gas souin, who commands the northern sec ion, told me that it will take two years before the railway system is in proper working order again.
 transportation is interlocked with all the big difficulties we have to cope with There is the question of raw materials and the question of labor. If, by demob- il,zation, we get labor we must trans I port the men to places where they are needed Then we must house and feed tLem. There is neither food nor housing accommodation. To provide it, we again need transportation.
 ''We are asked why we cannot make ! fuller use of the canals but these canals served as lines of defense for the enemy. Their banks are battered, they are full | of debris and need dredging. Many of | the locks are destroyed.
 I s.'The pits of the coal mining district are l flooded in places. One or two may be worked partly in six or eight months, but 1 it will be five or six years before the mines are in proper working condition again. Where are we to find the miners? | The country around is razed and devas- l tated to a degree of which people have l not the faintest idea. There is not a house left standing in Lens. How are VIC to lodge and feed mining population and how are we to regain our pre-war output of 20.0O0,00o tons of coal a year which even then did not cover our home needs?"
 !! Asked if France was recovering any of the textile metal manufacturing or sugar refining machinery stolen by the
 Germans, he replie4~ that it was difficult Ito transport it and most of the French plants were not yet ready to receive it. l .I know cases of Germans approaching | the original owners of machinery and of | fering to sell them back their own prop erty they had stolen from them." he 1 said.
 "Then there is the agricultural ques- tion." he continued. s'The arabic soil in | these parts is only 10 inches deep. Be meath 1t is a subsoil of barren chalk The good soil that grows wheat-where lis it? The farmers will have to begin fright from the beginning again. as the souatters did in America; that is, they will have to prepare the soil for culti- Ivation. Labor and transportation again Not in 15 or 20 years will that soil produce anything in the way of food grain