New-York tribune., 1920-03-07

industrial nation. In 1870 her pop
ulation was no larger than that Of
France; in 1914 it was almost twice
as great.
Stolen Property
But the whole expansion was ex-
plicable in terms Of stolen property,
If France still possessed the Saar
and Alsace- Lorraine, il Poland still
kept only the regions in which Poles
predoninated, then Germany would
be deprived Of precisely those raw
materials-the iron and the coal.
which were in a large measure re-
sponsible for her great expansion.
Moreover, this great expansion
was accompanied by the rapid
growth Of that spirit which pro-
duced the war. For two decades
Germans complained that their eco
nomic development entitled them to
territorial increases, they planned
attacks upon their neighbors be-
cause their own population had ex-
panded so rapidly that new terri
tories were necessary, and they
marked out for themselves Belgian
and French regions and conceived
the possibility Of completing the
extinction Of Polish hopes by taking
over Russian Poland.
This same expansion pushed them
into acute rivalry with the British.
Become a great industrial nation,
they of necessity embarked upon
foreign commerce, and az they had
to produce vastly more manufac-
tured articles than they consumed,
to meet their growing deficit in food,
they looked with ever-increasing
resentment at the immense British
colonial empire and the complete
mastery Of the seas by the British
fleet. For it was clear that it lay
within British power to shut of
their commercial exchanges if war
ever came.
Germany Overcrowded
Literally, Germany became an
overcrowded nation, living on its
manufactures, dependent upon for
eign markets, but without power to
protect its commerce and ever need
ing more territorial increase to meet
the growing demands Of it's popula-
ton, which continued to increase by
leaps and bounds. But only because
Germany, and Prussia before Ger
many, had successfully despoiled
France and Poland, Austria and Den
mark Of valuable provinces was she
able to engineer this vast economic
development. It was founded upon
successful robberies Of states which.
had they possessed the resources
taken from them, might have de-
veloped similarly within their own
frontiers.
Now the Treaty Of Versailles has
faced the facts Of the situation. It
has by no means done full justice.
1t has not restored to Poland all Of
tho regions stolen by the Germans,
having regard to the fact that in
some the Germans have by msans
Of brutal policy succeeded in re-
ducing the Polish population, but it
has restored much, and the things
restored necessarily injure German.
economic possibilities. If tho Poles
get the Silesian coal, it will be the
Polish factories which will prosper
and Poland will have an economic
development. No real question has
been raised about the return Of
Alsace-Lorraine to France, together
with the iron district, but mighty
protest has been raised over the
Saar Valley. yet both were stolen
from the French with equal disre-
gard Of the wishes of the inhsbi-
tants, the difference lying only in
the dates Of stealing. The one in
1814-'15 apparently finds warrant
in the fact that it has endured for
a century, while that Of 1871 is not
old enough to be established.
Saar Coal Basin