Clemenceau had chosen to stake everything on one throw not only because he had already run out of road, but more importantly because he wished to protect France.
France had been dealt a devastating blow in World War I, losing a vast number of people. Its outcome in the war had also made France's upper ranks understand the importance of population even more deeply. If France had not lagged behind Germany in population, it would not have fallen into its present predicament.
Although France's industry now also lagged behind Germany's, the root of the matter still lay in its population problem. After all, metropolitan France lacked the basic mineral resources needed for industrial development compared with Germany, though the resources of its colonies were far from poor.
However, developing those colonial resources also required population to support it. Otherwise, the resistance movements in the colonies alone would be enough to leave the French government scorched and frazzled.
In this respect, East Africa had done very well. The rapid population growth that had begun in the colonial era was the foundation that allowed East Africa to expand and monopolize half the African continent.
Had it adopted Europe's traditional colonial methods, East Africa could never have swelled to its present extent. Of course, this also benefited from the high birth rates among German and Far Eastern immigrants. The same was true of Slavic immigrants, East Africa's third-largest source of immigrants, though East Africa's Slavic immigrants had long since been Germanized.
Naturally, the French government—or rather, the current leadership of France—was immensely envious of East Africa's birth rate.
With a sorrowful tone, Clemenceau said, "France lost countless precious lives in the war, many of them young people. They should have been France's future, bearing the heavy responsibility of raising the next generation for