102 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



but complementary natural regions of the Saar and the Euhr to exchange 

 their surplus products on a business basis would have tended to an 

 earlier restoration of good feeling between the two countries. 



One other question which arises in this connection is the extent 

 to which the steel industry of Germany will suffer by the loss of the 

 regions from which she obtained the semi-manufactured products neces- 

 sary for it. On this subject it is dangerous to prophesy, but when we 

 take into consideration the length of time required for the construcfion 

 of modern steelworks, the technical skill involved in their management, 

 and the uncertainties with regard to future supplies of fuel, it seems 

 unlikely that France will attempt any rapid development of her steel 

 industry. In that case the Euhr will still continue to be an important 

 market for Lorraine and the Saar. 



Our general conclusion, then, is that the tenitorial arrangements 

 which have been made do not necessarily imperil the economic stability 

 of Germany. The economic consequences of the wai* are really much 

 more serious than the economic consequences of the peace. Germany 

 has for ten years to make good the difference between the actual and 

 the pre-war production of the French mines which she destroyed. Her 

 own miners are working shorter hours, and as a result her own pro- 

 duction is reduced, and as British miners are doing the same she is 

 unable to import from this country. For some years these deductions 

 will represent a loss to her of about 40,000,000 tons per annum, and 

 will undoubtedly make her position a serious one. But to give her 

 either the Saar or the Upper Silesian coalfields \\ould be to enable her 

 to pass on to others the debt which she herself has incurred. The re- 

 duction of her annual dehveries of coal to France, Belgium, and Italy 

 was, indeed, the best way in which to show mercy to her. 



The position of Poland is geographically weak, partly because its 

 surface features are such that the land has no v/ell-marked individuality, 

 and partly because there are on the east and west no natural boundaries 

 to prevent invasion or to restrain the Poles from wandering 

 far beyond the extreme limits of their State. Polish geographers 

 themselves appear to be conscious of this geographical infirmity, 

 as Vidal de la Blache would have teraied it, and in an 

 interesting httle work Nalkowski has endeavoured to show that 

 the very transitionality of the land between east and west entitles 

 it to be regarded as a geographical entity. But transitionality is rather 

 the negation of geographical individuality than the basis on which it 

 may be established. And indeed no one has pointed out its dangers 

 more clearly than Nalkowski himself. ' The Polish people,' he says, 

 ' living in this transitional country always were, and still are, a pre}' 

 to a succession of dangers and struggles. They should be ever alert 

 and courageous, remembering that on such a transitional plain, devoid 

 of strategic frontiers, racial boundaries are marked only by the energy 

 and civihsation of the people. If they are strong they advance those 

 frontiers by pushing forward ; by weakening and giving way they promol e 

 their contraction. So the mainland may thrust out arms into the sea, 

 or, being weak, may be breached and even overwhelmed by the ocean 

 fitKxls. ' If we bear in mind the constant temptation to a people which 



