This system will have a fifteen years’ trial, at the end of which the people are to be called on to vote, district by district, as to their future political status. The alternatives will be reunion with Germany, union with France, or continuance under the League of Nations with such modifications of the regime as may be necessary to adapt it to permanent use. Voting is open to all of the age of twenty who were resident in the territory at the date of the signature of the treaty of Versailles, and to these only, so that all temptation to colonize voters is thus removed, whether on the French or on the German side. The League of Nations shall take the necessary measures to put these votes into effect, making such decisions as may be necessary to adjust boundaries, etc. In any portion of the territory which votes to return to Germany, the German government shall buy back the mines, so as to remove any danger of friction over their operation. No such purchase is required in territory which may become French or remain under the League.[40]
The territory of the Saar basin thus created by the treaty of Versailles and governed by the International Commission covers 700 square miles with a population of 650,000—more than the population of Rhode Island, with two-thirds the area. Its boundaries were carefully drawn so that, while following as far as possible the lines of existing administrative divisions, they should include only the region economically dependent on the coal of the basin. It takes in the valley of the Saar from the point below Sarreguemines where its right bank ceases to be French territory to Saarhölzbach, where the narrows of the mountains close in and the workmen’s trains stop. To the north it covers only the area for which coal concessions have been granted and within which local industries live from the coal, the whole being belted by a connecting series of railroad lines. On the east it enters the Palatinate sufficiently to include the coal mines along the border and the railroad junction of Homburg which links up the railroads of the eastern part of the basin. The territory has an economic unity, ignored by its previous administrative organization, but recognized by those familiar with local conditions. Petitions to join the Saar basin have since been made to the League of Nations by inhabitants of Britten, Losheim, Wadern, and Weisskirchen, which adjoin the district on the north in Prussia.
Whether the lot of the Saar territory will appear enviable to other neighboring districts, it is still too soon to say. In spite of the misrepresentation of this chapter of the treaty by German and pro-German writers, an examination of its provisions shows that the rights and interests of the inhabitants have been carefully safeguarded under international guarantees. Indeed their position has so many advantages as compared with their neighbors in France and Germany that there were those at Paris who predicted that the plebiscite of 1935 would declare for the maintenance of an independent status under the League of Nations, free from outside responsibilities, both military and fiscal. Undoubtedly the issues will be economic as well as political, and much of the success of the new regime will depend on the economic and social policy of the Governing Commission. During the delays of ratification and organization the labor legislation of the district necessarily stood still at the point reached at the time of the Armistice, and a considerable task of readjustment and reconstruction falls on the new Commission, in a region inhabited by a concentrated mining and industrial population with a strong local organization of its own. It should be noted that, besides the general obligation to consult a local legislative assembly, it is provided that “in fixing the conditions and hours of labor for men, women, and children, the Governing Commission is to take into consideration the wishes expressed by the local labor organizations, as well as the principles adopted by the League of Nations,”[41] so that a progressive policy is clearly laid down. Moreover, by virtue of its geographical position, the labor of the Saar should be able to secure conditions at least as favorable as in adjoining regions, while, with a plebiscite in view, the French state administration of the mines will have every reason to maintain good relations with the mining population. At the same time neither France nor the Commission will have any reason for holding back the production of coal or the general industrial development of the district in favor of the mines and factories of Westphalia. In any event the people of the Saar will be in a position to decide for themselves, district by district, after actual experience of the new regime; nor are they likely to welcome the proposal of an ardent revisionist of the treaty of Versailles, who, while admitting that the arrangements respecting the Saar should stand for ten years, would take away from the inhabitants all opportunity of voting as to their future.[42] If government by the League of Nations is as “odious” as the German delegates declared at Versailles, then ten years of it is as indefensible in principle as fifteen. But if perchance the League’s Commission should prove less odious than its enemies anticipate, the fact will be worth recording for the sake of the League as well as of the people directly concerned.
The government of the Saar basin by a commission of the League of Nations is a very interesting experiment in international administration. Granted the prompt organization of a League such as the treaty contemplates, this experiment in commission government has a fair chance of success, and while the difficulty has been rendered greater by delay, it is not insoluble. By its success or failure in such matters the League will be in large measure judged in western Europe. There is reason to believe that its effectiveness depends likewise largely upon such permanent activities. Its Assembly will meet rarely, its Council not frequently, only its secretariat and its administrative organs will be constantly at work, and it is their action that will bring the League home to the peoples under its immediate control. Curiously enough, those who were most eager for the programme of an ambitious League were the first to criticise the creation of such commissions and their tasks. But if one of the chief objects of such an organization is to promote world peace, surely the Franco-German frontier is an important point for it to watch. And if the League can ease the strain here by acting as a sort of shock-absorber, protecting at the same time the property rights of France and the personal rights of the inhabitants, it will serve another interest no less important than peace, namely the cause of justice. If the League is not ready for this test, it is certainly not ready to become a super-state. The super-state can wait, but justice and peace are matters of today.
The Saar Commission, the Governing Commission for the occupied territory, the new Central Rhine Commission, all are manifestations of international interest in the Franco-German frontier, and efforts to relieve the strain in this area of high national tension. The demilitarization of the Left Bank and the river and the guarantee of France against unprovoked aggression from the east are likewise plainly in the interest of international peace. Even the most definitely national measure of all, the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine, was called for, according to President Wilson, not only to right the wrong done by Prussia in 1871, but “in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.” The League of Nations in the valley of the Rhine is the symbol of a new order.
Bibliographical Note
The history of the Left Bank is examined from various points of view by the Comité d’Etudes, i: L’Alsace-Lorraine et la frontière du Nord-est (1918). E. Babelon, Le Rhin dans l’histoire (Paris, 1916-17), is the fullest account from the point of view of the Rhine as the historical frontier of France. See also L. Madelin, in the Revue des deux Mondes, December 1, 1918; the pamphlets of Babelon, Driault, de Grailly, Milhaud, Stiénon, etc., issued in the same years; and the enquête published by the Libre Parole in February 1919. For a sane French criticism see Pfister, in Revue historique, cxxvi, pp. 334-338. A. Schulte, Frankreich und das linke Rheinufer (Stuttgart, 1918), is largely a critique of French writers.
For the important period 1794-1814 the best German accounts are C. T. Perthes, Politische Zustände und Personen in Deutschland zur Zeit der französichen Herrschaft (Bonn, 1862); and J. Hashagen, Das Rheinland und die französische Herrschaft (Bonn, 1908). An excellent French monograph is Ph. Sagnac, Le Rhin français pendant la Révolution et l’Empire (Paris, 1917). On Landau and Saarlouis, see Aulard, in Revue de Paris, March 15, 1919. J. Hansen (ed.), Die Rheinprovinz 1815-1915 (Bonn, 1917), is a comprehensive treatment of the Prussian period, with brief bibliographies. For a sketch of economic conditions, see Yves Guyot, La province rhénane et la Westphalie (Paris, 1915). On the Palatinate, see H. Schreibmüller, Bayern und die Pfalz, 1816-1916 (Kaiserslautern, 1916).
The French side of the negotiations respecting the ‘guarantees’ on the Left Bank is given by A. Tardieu, in L’Illustration, February 14, 1920. Nothing has as yet been published by the British or American negotiators.