not wish to give the coal of
Upper Silesia to Germany, and the big interests of the new great
metallurgical group press and trick, the Treaty of Versailles has here
also become a _chiffon de papier_.

Instead of accepting, as was the first duty, the result of the
plebiscite, people have resorted to sophism of incomparable weakness:
Article 88 of the Treaty of Versailles says only that the inhabitants
of Upper Silesia shall be called to designate by means of a plebiscite
if they desire to be united to Germany or to Poland.

It was necessary to find a sophism!

The Addendum of Section 8 establishes how the work of scrutiny shall
be carried out and all the procedure of the elections. There are six
articles of procedure. Paragraph 4 says that each one shall vote in
the commune where he is domiciled or in that where he was born if he
has not a domicile in the territory. The result of the vote shall be
determined commune by commune, according to the majority of votes in
each commune.

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