The erection of mixed arbitral tribunals for adjustment of war claims of private citizens put a premium upon the appeal to force. What it meant was that, if your country was successful in fighting, you had a valid claim against a citizen of a defeated country, and that your claim would be adjusted by arbiters appointed by your own country. The important thing, then, according to the Treaty of Versailles, was not the sanctity of private contracts entered into between individuals of different nations, but citizenship in a winning nation. In aërial navigation and in ports, waterways, and railways, the right of the victors to transit across and privileges on German soil were affirmed without reciprocity. Not only were the Germans denied the right of transport by air and water and rail, on equal terms with other nations, outside their own country, but they were required to open up Germany to Allied control and to concede special privileges in waterways and ports, to facilitate the passage over their territory of international trains--all this without reciprocity. The time-limits set gave no reasonable hope of a change; for the removal of disabilities depended upon the integral observance of all the other treaty obligations. _The Violation of the Principle of Self-Determination Where It Was to the Interest of the Victors to Ignore It._ On the ground that Alsace-Lorraine had been forcibly taken from France against the will of the inhabitants in a previous war, it was altogether just that France should receive back her “lost provinces” without a plebiscite. Even had one been taken, the result would not have been in doubt. France would have won by an overwhelming vote. It was just also to stipulate the return to Denmark of indisputably Danish territory, with a plebiscite for doubtful border districts. The other territorial provisions were open to question. The most flagrant violation of the principle of self-determination was in the matter of the detachment for fifteen years (with a plebiscite at the end of that time) of the Saar Valley from Germany. This wholly German district of over half a million souls was put under the League of Nations, but really given to France to run, as compensation for the destruction of coal-mines in northern France. That the treaty of peace should have contained provisions for adequate compensation--ton-to-ton replacement--for the French losses in coal was to be expected. But the Saar arrangement was political and not economic,[5] and, as far as the inhabitants of the region were concerned, its practical application meant for them what the Treaty of Frankfort had meant for Alsatians nearly half a century earlier. The Saar clauses constitute a shameful betrayal of the high ideals for which the war was fought. Confirmation of this statement is easily obtained. Let the reader go to the Saar and talk with the people. Violence has been done to their most sacred sentiments. Two wrongs do not make a right.