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By the Rome agreement of last month Germany will then have an opportunity to pay France handsomely in gold for the Saar mines as explicitly provided in the Treaty of Versailles. If Germany does not pay, then France will have every right to hold two of the mines, and Premier Flandin is a young man of tenacious resolution. If Germany does pay for the Saar mines, while continuing to welsh on her numerous prior debts to all the world, then indeed the name of Nazi will stink abroad.
Paradoxically the plebiscite, in which Saarlanders may vote to 1) rejoin Germany, 2) stay under the League, or 3) join France, will not in any sense be final. It will merely provide the League of Nations with data upon which to work out a settlement. According to the Treaty of Versailles, not only the majority opinion of the whole Saar but also the majority in each important district must be considered. Thus the plebiscite may easily produce no clear mandate. What is the League to do, for example, should Saarlouis alone vote overwhelmingly to rejoin France? Under the Treaty it is clear that to turn over Saarlouis, in such circumstances, to the mercy of the Nazis would be at least a base betrayal of President Wilson.
Coal & Iron, Ask any unsentimental economist about the Saar and he will postulate the essential truth: the iron of Alsace-Lorraine and the coal of the Saar exist in a Heaven-sent propinquity which it would be economic madness to disrupt. Here are mighty minerals, lumped together in mid-Europe, which the economist must call more important than shibboleths or frontiers. In an economic age the pragmatic Right is that the Saar and Alsace-Lorraine be kept together under whatever flag for fecund production of the Great God Steel.
Saar Dollars, Educational for Saar-landers arriving from the U.S. last week was a decision by the Saar Supreme Court. In 1925 and 1927 the Municipality of Saarbrücken sold to U.S. citizens two bond issues of $3,000,000 each, payable in gold dollars or their equivalent. In the U.S. such agreements to repay in pre-Roosevelt dollars were invalidated by act of Congress last year. Elated, the Municipality of Saarbrücken prepared to repay its bondholders in cut-rate Roosevelt dollars, at a saving of some 40%. Last week the Saar Supreme Court held that such chiseling may be legal in the U.S. but is not legal in the Saar, ordered Saarbrücken to fulfill its clear obligation to holders of Saar dollar bonds.