entirely or in part to France? Politics and economics are not
everything, said Clemenceau; history also has great value. For the
United States a hundred and twenty years are a long time; for France
they count little. Material reparations are not enough, there must be
moral reparations too, and the conception of France cannot be the same
as that of her Allies. The desire for the Saar responded, according
to Clemenceau, to a need of moral reparation. On this point, too,
the extreme French claim was modified. The Saar mines were given to
France, not provisionally as a matter of reparations, but permanently
with full right of possession and full guarantees for their working.
For fifteen years from the date of the treaty the government of the
territory was put in the hands of the League of Nations as trustee;
after fifteen years the population, entirely German, should be called
to decide under what government they desired to live. In other words,
in a purely German country, which no one in France had ever claimed,
of which no one in France had ever spoken during the War, the most
important property was handed to a conquering State, the country was
put under the administration of the conquerors (which is what the
League of Nations actually is at present), and after fifteen years of
torment the population is to be put through a plebiscite. Meanwhile
the French douane rules in the Saar.

It was open to the treaty to adopt or not to adopt the system of
plebiscites. When it was a case of handing over great masses of German
populations, a plebiscite was imperative--at any rate, where any doubt
existed, and the more so in concessions which formed no part of the
War aims and were not found in any pronouncement of the Allies. On the
other hand, in all cessions of German territory to Poland and Bohemia,
no mention is made of a plebiscite because it was a question of
military necessity or of lands which had been historically victims