not compensated by normal repairs, had already reduced the German
railway system to a low state of efficiency. The further heavy losses
under the Treaty will confirm this state of affairs for some time to
come, and are a substantial aggravation of the difficulties of the coal
problem and of export industry generally.

(iii.) There remain the clauses relating to the river system of Germany.
These are largely unnecessary and are so little related to the supposed
aims of the Allies that their purport is generally unknown. Yet they
constitute an unprecedented interference with a country's domestic
arrangements and are capable of being so operated as to take from
Germany all effective control over her own transport system. In their
present form they are incapable of justification; but some simple
changes might transform them into a reasonable instrument.

Most of the principal rivers of Germany have their source or their
outlet in non-German territory. The Rhine, rising in Switzerland, is now
a frontier river for a part of its course, and finds the sea in Holland;
the Danube rises in Germany but flows over its greater length elsewhere;
the Elbe rises in the mountains of Bohemia, now called Czecho-Slovakia;
the Oder traverses Lower Silesia; and the Niemen now bounds the frontier
of East Prussia and has its source in Russia. Of these, the Rhine and
the Niemen are frontier rivers, the Elbe is primarily German but in its
upper reaches has much importance for Bohemia, the Danube in its German
parts appears to have little concern for any country but Germany, and
the Oder is an almost purely German river unless the result of the
plebiscite is to detach all Upper Silesia.

Rivers which, in the words of the Treaty, "naturally provide more than
one State with access to the sea," properly require some measure of