the provisions respecting guarantees of the whole treaty involve
the occupation of this very region. German territory west of the
Rhine, together with the Rhine bridgeheads, is to be held for
fifteen years by Allied and Associated troops. In case of faithful
execution of the treaty, this region is to be evacuated by these
troops in three successive zones at intervals of five years; in case
of non-execution, the territory may be reoccupied and the period of
occupation extended.[36] A further agreement, of even date with the
treaty, provides for the administration of the occupied territory
under a civilian Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission representing
France, Belgium, Great Britain, and the United States, subject to
whose authority the German local administration is maintained. Neither
the military occupation nor the civilian Commission covers the
demilitarized zone on the Right Bank, a gap between the two systems of
administration which was to prove particularly serious in the region of
the Ruhr, the principal source of the coal on which France and other
Allies had an option under other clauses of the treaty, a district
liable to serious industrial disturbances for the suppression of which
the German government would demand the right to use troops.
Finally, as a more positive and direct guarantee of the country
which had borne the brunt of Germany’s aggression, Great Britain
and the United States agreed to come to the aid of France in case
of an unprovoked attack by Germany.[37] Designed to offer adequate
assurance during the transitional period while the League of Nations
was getting under way, this supplementary treaty recognized not only
the peculiar dangers of France, exposed directly to the full force of
a German offensive, but also the general interest in her full security
and protection. To the French this was an essential part of the peace
settlement, and without it they would have insisted on more direct and
more material guarantees of their own.
* * * * *
Another matter affecting the Left Bank came into prominence at the
conference, namely the valley of the Saar. From one point of view
this was a phase of the question of Alsace-Lorraine, for a portion of
the Saar basin had once been a part of Lorraine and the recovery of
the lost provinces revived the question of their historic boundaries.
It was also part of the problem of the Left Bank, for the territory
belonged to Prussia and Bavaria and was inhabited by a population of
predominantly German affinities, and any annexation here was subject
to the same objections as elsewhere on German soil. Lastly, the coal
mines of the valley raised a more special question, for they adjoined
immediately the new boundary of France, and thus offered an easy source
of reparation for the destruction and devastation of French territory.
At the outbreak of the French Revolution neither Alsace nor Lorraine
possessed a clearly defined frontier toward the north. In each case
the boundary had arisen historically, without any large measures of
readjustment or delimitation, in a region of minute subdivisions and
overlapping claims; and the result was a tortuous, broken line, with
enclaves on either side, which defied geographical and administrative
convenience. At certain points the limits of sovereignty were in
dispute, and the boundary cannot everywhere be defined with certainty.
In Alsace, beyond the present limit of the river Lauter, lay the
enclave of Landau, an old Alsatian city which had passed to France in
1648, while the intervening territory obeyed the bishop of Speier,
the duke of Zweibrücken, or the Elector Palatine. To the north of
Lorraine Louis XIV had established French influence on the Saar and
constructed his new town of Saarlouis, as an outpost to insure the
military control of the valley. The acquisition in the eighteenth
century of the duchy of Lorraine, already traversed and cut up by
pieces of French territory, carried the French frontier well to the
north and east of Saarlouis, while at the same time it left the German
county of Saarbrücken astride the Saar on either side of the town of
the same name. A glance at the map will show the impossible character
of the resulting frontier, which had not been greatly improved when
the armies of the Revolution poured over it and added the whole region
to France. That its incorporation was not a simple act of violence
appears from various petitions of 1797 asking for the privileges of
French citizenship, among them a long list of signers from the canton
of Saarbrücken.[38]
In 1814 the first treaty of Paris had as its primary task to
reëstablish the limits of France. As the basis of its work it took
the frontier of January 1, 1792, as anterior to the revolutionary
wars of conquest. In this region, this did not differ from the
frontier of 1789. It was, however, recognized that the old frontier
had become an impossibility in the region of Alsace-Lorraine, and
required straightening and adjustment to adapt it to modern conditions.
Accordingly enclaves were abandoned on either side. Toward the Rhine
the new arrangement took away certain French dependencies in the
neighborhood of Wissembourg and Landau, but left France those towns and
added a connecting strip of territory extending east to the Rhine. In
the region of the Saar France lost the outlying lands to the north and
gained the valley of the river above Saarlouis, including Saarbrücken
and the region round about. In area the adjustments roughly balanced,
but in resources France had received an advantage because of the coal
deposits thus retained. As a geographic frontier, the new line of 1814
was a great improvement, but it was never laid out on the spot or put
into actual effect.
In the frontier imposed upon her in 1815 France paid the penalty for
Napoleon’s Hundred Days of glory. Toward the Rhine Landau was taken,
and her territory was cut back to the Lauter. In Lorraine she lost
the whole middle and lower portion of the Saar valley, including not
only the new acquisitions about Saarbrücken but the town of Saarlouis,
which had been French since its foundation. In theory the frontier of
1815 was to reëstablish the France of 1789. In fact it left France
smaller than in 1789. And what was taken was given, not to the former
rulers, still less to the inhabitants, but to Prussia. Whatever may
be said against the claims of France in this region, Prussia had no
rights there of any sort. Her nearest Rhenish possessions in 1789
had been a hundred and fifty miles away. She was established on the
Rhine, not because the people wanted her, but because she wanted
territory--Saxony, if possible, if not, something else--and because the
Allies wanted somebody to watch France.
So the reasons of the boundary line of 1815 are not far to seek.
Landau and Saarlouis were fortresses of Vauban, defences of which it
was thought prudent to deprive France, and this strategic argument has
always been emphasized. We now know that the coal of the Saar was also
a reason. This was openly stated by German historians before the war,
and is supported by the correspondence of Heinrich Böcking, an agent of
the German family of Stumm, still one of the great manufacturing firms
of the region. Made commissioner of the mines in 1814, he followed the
Prussian commissioners to Paris in the following year, and urged large
annexations for Prussia at the expense of the Palatinate and France.
In 1802 the French had opened a mining school at Geislautern, near
Saarbrücken, and developed considerably the mines and industries of
the region. Their careful surveys of the coal field were insistently
demanded by the Prussians, and finally acquired in 1817. Some petitions
from the inhabitants were received by the Prussians from Saarbrücken,
but then there had been petitions in the opposite sense in 1797.
The loss of the frontier of 1814 to Prussia remained a sore point with
France until it was swallowed up in the greater loss of 1871. When
the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine in 1918 revived the question of their
former boundaries, it was natural to inquire what the intervening
century had brought forth. In the region of Landau there has been
little change. A town of 5000 in 1815, it had grown only to 18,000 in
1910. The surrounding region of farm and forest had likewise altered
little. The Saar valley, on the other hand, had shared the industrial
development of the most prosperous parts of the Rheinprovinz. Its
coal mines, and those of the neighboring villages of the Palatinate,
had come to produce eight per cent of the huge output of the German
empire. About this supply of fuel had grown up numerous industrial
establishments--pottery and glassware to some extent, but especially
blast furnaces and great iron and steel plants at Dillingen,
Völklingen, Burbach, and Neunkirchen, busy on tasks of war as well as
on those of peace. Great names in the German iron and steel industry
stand out as the proprietors--Böcking, Röchling, Mannesmann, Stumm.
Saarbrücken, a town of perhaps 5000 in 1815, had a population of
105,000 in 1910. To the north and to the west the lines of industrial
towns were almost unbroken. 355,000 people now lived between the Saar
frontiers of 1814 and 1815; and as many more in the adjoining regions
which depended on the valley’s coal and manufactures. The Prussian
railroad system threw its network over the basin. Prussian legislation
provided houses and schools and social insurance for the workmen. Save
perhaps for the beautiful state forests which ran to the edge of the
towns and the mines, the whole character of the country recalled the
great industrial region of the lower Rhine. Over the border of the
Palatinate matters moved a bit more slowly, after the Bavarian fashion.
The towns were not quite so spick-and-span, the model dwellings were
not so much in evidence, the local capital, Zweibrücken, preserved
the flavor of a _Residenzstadt_ of the old regime. But the flavor
was German not French. In the western part of the valley French
names could still be found, notably in Saarlouis, which kept much of
the appearance of an old French town, with its hôtel de ville, its
great public square, and along the river front the remains of its
fortifications built by Vauban. And there were those who had not wholly
forgotten that Saarlouis was the birthplace of Marshal Ney.
In France, at least, there were many who had not forgotten. The demand
for the frontier of 1814 was noticeably greater than that for other
parts of the Left Bank. It was partly historic, a desire to reclaim
what had once been French and had played its part in the great deeds
of French history. This was not confined to partisans of the old
regime: Aulard, historian and upholder of the Revolution, urged the
return of Saarlouis and Landau on the ground that they had sworn the
great revolutionary covenant of 1790 and had been torn from France by
violence in 1815, as were Alsace and Lorraine half a century later.[39]
Popular interest would have been greater if the frontier of 1814 had
been a real line separating peoples for a term of years, instead of
a provision on paper. And the historic frontier of 1792, the actual
boundary during the eighteenth century, had become impossible; no one
asked for that. The best historic argument for the frontier of 1814 was
that it had then been considered a just and practical equivalent for
the line of 1792; in that sense it represented the peace of justice,
while the line of 1815 was clearly the peace of violence.
Stronger than the historic argument was the economic: France, a
country poor in coal, had been forcibly despoiled of the Saar mines
in 1814; she needed them back; and her need was now much greater
since the wanton and systematic destruction of her mines in the Nord
and Pas-de-Calais by the Germans. The two arguments did not entirely
coincide, so far as the Saar was concerned. The historic argument was
strongest in respect to the district of Saarlouis, where there was
little coal. Saarbrücken, the centre of the coal field, had been French
only for a brief period, 1793-1815. Moreover, the frontier of 1814 did
not cover the whole of the mining area, perhaps a third of which lay to
the north toward Ottweiler and to the east in the Palatinate, and its
reëstablishment would have disrupted the economic life of the region.
Many Frenchmen were genuinely opposed to any annexations of territory
beyond the Alsace-Lorraine of 1871, as contrary to the principles on
which the war had been fought. They had not, they said, been fighting
for the Rhine or the Saar. This was the Socialist contention, and it
was shared by many Republicans who were not Socialists. All, however,
who looked facts in the face felt the need of the coal. “If we could
only get the coal without the people,” said a distinguished Socialist
early in the winter. “We must have the coal, and we must find some
arrangement to get it without annexing the population,” a great
historian said a little later.
The people were overwhelmingly German. A considerable directing element
of capitalists, engineers, and officials had come from other parts of
the empire, but the great majority were natives of the region. The
mining population of 56,000 included surprisingly few foreigners or
even Germans from a distance. Many had their cottages with a plot of
ground about, going to and fro daily on workmen’s trains or returning
home for the week-end. The ruling element was strongly Prussian, a
part of the great administrative machine directed from Berlin. The
regular local administration existed, but only as a part of the
Rheinprovinz and of a Regierungsbezirk administered from Trier. The
adjoining portions of the Palatinate were governed from Munich and
Speier. The economic unity of the region had no corresponding political
organization, as was admitted by German officials. The mass of the
people were particularly interested in their labor organizations and
in their rights under German labor legislation. If they had been
consulted, they would doubtless have voted to remain with Germany.
But it was at least debatable whether they had a right at the same
time to vote to Germany the mines which she had taken in 1815 without
consulting anybody. The control of key deposits of minerals by the
small population which happens to live over them is not a necessary
part of the principle of self-determination, particularly when this
population forms part of a state which has been destroying the mines of
others. The separation of mines from people may sometimes be governed
by international considerations.
The coal field of the Saar is the northern outcrop of a considerable
deposit which extends in a southwesterly direction across Lorraine
to the Moselle in the neighborhood of Pont-à-Mousson. Toward the
southwest, however, the strata dip so deep as to be unworkable. The
practicable part of the field is in the Saar valley, partly on the
edge of annexed Lorraine, chiefly in Rhenish Prussia, with a small
strip in the adjoining part of the Palatinate. The total output in 1913
was seventeen and a half million tons, of which two-thirds was mined
between the frontiers of 1814 and 1815. It was understood, however,
that production had been artificially restricted in the interest of the
Westphalian field, and the proportion of the actual coal reserve was
much greater. Any estimates of reserves are necessarily approximate,
but in 1913 it was calculated that the Saar field contained seventeen
billion tons, equal to 22% of the total German reserve, and more than
the whole known supply of France, a country relatively poor in coal. No
wonder the French found it hard to forget the loss of 1815! Moreover,
all the mines in operation lay within a dozen miles of the new French
frontier in Lorraine.
France not only needed this coal, she had a strong claim to it. The
chief French mines, those of Lens and Valenciennes on the Belgian
border, had been in German hands for more than four years and had
been deliberately flooded and rendered unworkable by the occupying
armies. The period of restoration was variously estimated; it has
since been fixed by German engineers at eight years at the least, and
the total property loss has been estimated at eighty per cent. For
this definite reparation in kind could be exacted in the Saar field.
But that was not all. Germany had agreed to compensate for all damage
done to the civilian population and their property, yet conservative
estimates of the bill for general reparation in northern France far
exceeded any available means of payment on Germany’s part, even when
the payment was spread over a long series of years and thus reduced in
actual restorative power. Proposals to take over German enterprises
like railroads or factories were impracticable, not only because of
the political difficulties of operating them on German territory but
because this would interfere with Germany’s ability to earn her annual
payments of indemnity. The Saar mines, on the contrary, lay on the
outer edge of Germany; they were already linked with the industries
of Lorraine, henceforth French; they were, with two exceptions
(Frankenholz and Hostenbach), the property of the Prussian and Bavarian
states. Always supposing that they were properly credited on the
reparation account, no better means of payment could be found for a
debt which Germany had agreed to pay.
Accordingly, it was agreed in principle, late in March 1919, that the
full ownership of the coal mines of the Saar basin should pass to
France, to be credited on her claims against Germany for reparation.
With full and unencumbered property in the mines the treaty gave
the fullest economic facilities for their exploitation, including
the acquisition of all subsidiaries and dependencies, freedom of
transportation and sale, exemption from other than local taxes, and
full mobility of labor. The mines were placed within the French customs
union, and payment in connection with their operation might be made in
French money. The elementary justice of this transfer of the mines to
France has become increasingly clear in the past few months. Out of the
crumbling uncertainties of reparation for war damage, France secures
one solid asset, and she secures it in a form absolutely essential for
the revival of her wrecked industries. Those who have urged that she
ought to have been satisfied with a coal contract instead, a claim
for delivery rather than mines to be worked, have been refuted by the
decreasing production of coal in Germany and the growing unwillingness
of the Germans to make the deliveries of coal to which they obligated
themselves in the treaty. A mine in hand is worth many contracts to
deliver.
The transfer of the Saar mines and their appurtenances to the
French state raised a difficult question of administration. If the
German government retained the full power to fix the conditions of
exploitation, transportation, and sale, and if German legislation was
to be carried out by Prussian officials, the conditions of operation
could easily be made impossible, and the ownership of the mines prove
nugatory. On the other hand, if the government were handed over, either
temporarily or permanently, to France, the inhabitants lost their
political rights and were subjected to an alien rule. It was the old
question, how to transfer the mines without subjecting the people.
The solution of this conflict of rights and interests was found in the
international organization of the League of Nations. Germany agreed
to hand over the government of the territory, but not the ultimate
sovereignty, to the League of Nations as trustee, and the League is
to administer it through an international Governing Commission. This
commission consists of five members, one a native inhabitant of the
Saar territory, one a Frenchman, the others representing other nations.
Sitting in the territory, it has all powers of government hitherto
belonging to the German empire, Prussia, and Bavaria, and full power
to administer the local public services. It must maintain the existing
system of courts and local officials, and must consult an elective
assembly with respect to new taxes or legislation. Subject to its
control, “the inhabitants will retain their local assemblies, their
religious liberties, their schools, and their language.” They keep also
their German nationality, their rights under German labor legislation,
their pension rights and accrued pensions. They lose only their right
to vote for representatives in the Reichstag and the Prussian and
Bavarian diets; their participation in self-government is much greater
than that of the inhabitants of the District of Columbia! They gain the
advantages of a governing body resident in the territory and familiar
with its special needs, in place of an administration from Berlin and
Munich. They also gain exemption from military service and other than
local taxes, and from contribution to the German war indemnities,
besides favorable adjustments of customs duties.
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.