A commission was then appointed, representing Belgium and Holland as well as the principal Allied and Associated Powers, but its field was specifically restricted to “proposals involving neither transfer of territorial sovereignty nor the creation of international servitudes.” As any thoroughgoing settlement satisfactory to Belgium could not help touching in some way the sovereignty of Holland, and as the regime of the Scheldt already constituted an international servitude, the terms of reference were generally regarded as a triumph for the Dutch. The commission went to work in the summer in two sections, one military and the other economic, but no final results had been reached when the Peace Conference dissolved in December. The reference of such outstanding matters to the governments concerned is another victory for Holland, who desires no change in the existing situation. In these matters Belgium has derived little advantage from the support of her allies. Holland still holds the lower Scheldt and the lower Meuse; Luxemburg seems permanently lost; except in the matter of her neutrality, Belgium stands substantially where she stood in 1839. If the territorial status of Belgium has not been essentially bettered by the war, her economic status is certainly worse. No share in a problematic indemnity will compensate her for her direct losses, not to speak of her other expenses--the stripping of her resources, the enforced idleness of her factories, the disappearance of her foreign markets and her transit trade. Dependent in an extraordinary degree on the outside world, Belgium was cut off from it for nearly five years, and it is a question how fully she can recover her previous position. A hero in 1914, is Belgium to remain a cripple for the future? The German is gone, but he left ruin and disillusion behind him. Small wonder that many a Belgian asks whether it was all worth while, as he contrasts his lean and hungry country with the prosperity of neutral Holland. Small wonder that the neutral world, as it looks to the future, is encouraged to imitate the Holland that stood pat, the Luxemburg that succumbed, rather than the Belgium that resisted. The neutral is more prosperous than the ally.