In the House of Commons on May 9, 1923, Mr. Edward Wood, a member of the Bonar Law Cabinet, who presided over the meeting of the Council of the League in April, 1923, told how the Council had virtually washed its hands of the Saar. The Commission consisted of a French president, with four assistants, a Belgian, a Dane with a French name, a Canadian, and a representative of the Saar population. The Canadian sided with the local representative in trying to prevent the oppression of the people, who were being ruled in a way that provoked them to appeal for redress to the Council. The President of the Commission had explained to the Council that the decrees, adopted by the majority of the Commission, were “not illegal” and were justified on the ground that they were adopted “to meet exceptional circumstances.” It developed in the debate that one of the decrees imposed penalties of imprisonment and fine for certain “crimes,” without hearing or trial or resort to appeal. Among the “crimes” was casting discredit on the Treaty of Versailles. The inhabitants of the Saar are not allowed to discuss publicly the régime that governs them or their future. Sir John Simon told the Commons that this measure was a “most astounding abuse of legislative power,” and Mr. Asquith called it a “monstrous and ridiculous decree” for the like of which “one might ransack the annals of despotism in the worst days of Russia’s oppression of Finland without finding a more monstrous specimen of despotic legislation or one more suppressive of the elementary rights of free citizenship.” Lord Robert Cecil, just back from his American tour in favor of the League of Nations, declared that the action was worthy of militarism at its worst, and that he had always had grave doubts of the wisdom of making the League responsible for the Saar régime. The cession of Malmédy and Eupen to Belgium was clearly against the wishes of the inhabitants of those regions. During the peace negotiations I visited these places, and I visited them afterward, just as I did the Saar. The people told me that they were Germans and wanted to remain Germans. They were not given the opportunity, any more than the people of the Saar were, to vote upon their detachment from Germany. The treaty provided for registers at Malmédy and Eupen, in which, within a fixed time, any inhabitant of these regions could write down his desire to return to German sovereignty. The defenders of the treaty, by virtue of this curious provision, declared that the people had a chance to decide. Did they? Any one who dared to sign those registers was expelled and his property confiscated. After two or three examples of this sort, nothing more was done. It was like the right of our negroes to vote in the South. In these cases I have the facts, names, dates, and particulars of each instance.