Comparatively few Frenchmen demanded the outright annexation of the Left Bank, nor was the number large of those who wished to prepare for it by an indefinitely prolonged military occupation. Nevertheless, the annexationist group was much in evidence, and conducted an active campaign. It was a Conservative and Nationalist body, whose opinion was expressed by journals like the _Echo de Paris_ and the _Libre Parole_. It had also strong support in high military quarters, which desired a long military occupation of the country, particularly of the Rhine itself and its bridges. It was urged that, however the historical question might lie, the Rhine was the obvious military frontier of France, the one advanced line which could not be turned and which guaranteed France against invasion. It was even maintained that this was the real frontier of all the Allies, the front line that must be held at all cost against Germany. It need not even be held in force, for Allied control of the nine great Rhine bridges would suffice to prevent invasion. Germany must lose her springboard for jumping into France! As to the intervening territory, a favorite French solution was that of an independent buffer state under French protection. And since such a state, in spite of its great resources, would not be large enough to maintain its economic independence, it was thought preferable that it should lie within the French customs zone. The political status of such a state was variously viewed as one of entire independence, as a French or Allied protectorate, or as a federal state of the German empire entirely detached from Prussia. At one time there were even signs of a movement toward separation, for the Catholic Rhineland was inclined to resist the programme of the Majority Socialists, and there were French Catholics who would have welcomed its affiliation to France. Separatist tendencies were not, however, encouraged by England and the United States, and they never reached serious proportions. The most notable example of such a movement was in the Palatinate, where French troops were in possession. Moreover an economic protectorate recalled too directly the history of the German Zollverein, and even certain economic aims of Germany during the world war. The only definite advance which France made in this direction was the severance of Luxemburg from the German customs union by the treaty, and its subsequent entry into the French customs union by popular vote of its inhabitants the following September.