In France, at least, there were many who had not forgotten. The demand for the frontier of 1814 was noticeably greater than that for other parts of the Left Bank. It was partly historic, a desire to reclaim what had once been French and had played its part in the great deeds of French history. This was not confined to partisans of the old regime: Aulard, historian and upholder of the Revolution, urged the return of Saarlouis and Landau on the ground that they had sworn the great revolutionary covenant of 1790 and had been torn from France by violence in 1815, as were Alsace and Lorraine half a century later.[39] Popular interest would have been greater if the frontier of 1814 had been a real line separating peoples for a term of years, instead of a provision on paper. And the historic frontier of 1792, the actual boundary during the eighteenth century, had become impossible; no one asked for that. The best historic argument for the frontier of 1814 was that it had then been considered a just and practical equivalent for the line of 1792; in that sense it represented the peace of justice, while the line of 1815 was clearly the peace of violence. Stronger than the historic argument was the economic: France, a country poor in coal, had been forcibly despoiled of the Saar mines in 1814; she needed them back; and her need was now much greater since the wanton and systematic destruction of her mines in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais by the Germans. The two arguments did not entirely coincide, so far as the Saar was concerned. The historic argument was strongest in respect to the district of Saarlouis, where there was little coal. Saarbrücken, the centre of the coal field, had been French only for a brief period, 1793-1815. Moreover, the frontier of 1814 did not cover the whole of the mining area, perhaps a third of which lay to the north toward Ottweiler and to the east in the Palatinate, and its reëstablishment would have disrupted the economic life of the region. Many Frenchmen were genuinely opposed to any annexations of territory beyond the Alsace-Lorraine of 1871, as contrary to the principles on which the war had been fought. They had not, they said, been fighting for the Rhine or the Saar. This was the Socialist contention, and it was shared by many Republicans who were not Socialists. All, however, who looked facts in the face felt the need of the coal. “If we could only get the coal without the people,” said a distinguished Socialist early in the winter. “We must have the coal, and we must find some arrangement to get it without annexing the population,” a great historian said a little later.