This means then that the results of the voting, as is done in political questions in all countries, should, be controlled commune by commune:  it is the form of the scrutiny which the appendix defines.  Instead, in order to take the coal away from Germany, it was attempted, and is being still attempted, not to apply the treaty, but to violate the principle of the indivisibility of the territory and to give the mining districts to Poland.

The violation of the neutrality of Belgium was not an offence to a treaty more serious than this attempt; the Treaty of 1839 cannot be considered a chiffon de papier more than the Treaty of Versailles.  Only the parties are inverted.

It is not France, noble and democratic, which inspires these movements, but a plutocratic situation which has taken the same positions, but on worse grounds, as the German metallurgists before the War.  It is the same current against which Lloyd George has several times bitterly protested and for which he has had very bitter words which it is not necessary to recall.  It is the same movement which has created agitations in Italy by means of its organs, and which attempt one thing only:  to ruin the German industry and, having the control of the coal, to monopolize in Europe the iron industries and those which are derived from it.

First of all, in order to indemnify France for the temporary damages done to the mines in the North, there was the cession in perpetuo of the mines of the Saar; then there were the repeated attempts to occupy the territory of the Ruhr to control the coal; last of all there is the wish not to apply the plebiscite and to violate the Treaty of Versailles by not giving Upper Silesia to Germany, but giving it abusively to Poland.

Germany produced before the War about 190,000,000 tons of coal; in 1913 191,500,000.  The consumption of these mines themselves was about a tenth, 19,000,000 tons, whilst for exportation were 83,500,000 tons, and for internal consumption were 139,000,000.

Now Germany has lost, and justly, Alsace-Lorraine, 3,800,000 tons.  She has lost, and it was not just, the Saar, 13,200,000 tons.  She is bound by the obligations of the treaty to furnish France with 20,000,000 tons, and to Belgium and Italy and France again another 25,000,000 tons.  If she loses the excellent coal of Upper Silesia, about 43,800,000 tons per year, she will be completely paralysed.

It is needless to lose time in demonstrating for what geographic, ethnographic and economist reason Upper Silesia should be united with Germany.  It is a useless procedure, and also, after the plebiscites, an insult to the reasoning powers.  If the violation of treaties is not a right of the victor, after the plebiscite, in which, notwithstanding all the violences, three-quarters of the population voted for Germany, then there is no reason for discussion.