This system will have a fifteen years’ trial, at the end of which the people are to be called on to vote, district by district, as to their future political status. The alternatives will be reunion with Germany, union with France, or continuance under the League of Nations with such modifications of the regime as may be necessary to adapt it to permanent use. Voting is open to all of the age of twenty who were resident in the territory at the date of the signature of the treaty of Versailles, and to these only, so that all temptation to colonize voters is thus removed, whether on the French or on the German side. The League of Nations shall take the necessary measures to put these votes into effect, making such decisions as may be necessary to adjust boundaries, etc. In any portion of the territory which votes to return to Germany, the German government shall buy back the mines, so as to remove any danger of friction over their operation. No such purchase is required in territory which may become French or remain under the League.[40] The territory of the Saar basin thus created by the treaty of Versailles and governed by the International Commission covers 700 square miles with a population of 650,000--more than the population of Rhode Island, with two-thirds the area. Its boundaries were carefully drawn so that, while following as far as possible the lines of existing administrative divisions, they should include only the region economically dependent on the coal of the basin. It takes in the valley of the Saar from the point below Sarreguemines where its right bank ceases to be French territory to Saarhölzbach, where the narrows of the mountains close in and the workmen’s trains stop. To the north it covers only the area for which coal concessions have been granted and within which local industries live from the coal, the whole being belted by a connecting series of railroad lines. On the east it enters the Palatinate sufficiently to include the coal mines along the border and the railroad junction of Homburg which links up the railroads of the eastern part of the basin. The territory has an economic unity, ignored by its previous administrative organization, but recognized by those familiar with local conditions. Petitions to join the Saar basin have since been made to the League of Nations by inhabitants of Britten, Losheim, Wadern, and Weisskirchen, which adjoin the district on the north in Prussia.