Whether the lot of the Saar territory will appear enviable to other neighboring districts, it is still too soon to say. In spite of the misrepresentation of this chapter of the treaty by German and pro-German writers, an examination of its provisions shows that the rights and interests of the inhabitants have been carefully safeguarded under international guarantees. Indeed their position has so many advantages as compared with their neighbors in France and Germany that there were those at Paris who predicted that the plebiscite of 1935 would declare for the maintenance of an independent status under the League of Nations, free from outside responsibilities, both military and fiscal. Undoubtedly the issues will be economic as well as political, and much of the success of the new regime will depend on the economic and social policy of the Governing Commission. During the delays of ratification and organization the labor legislation of the district necessarily stood still at the point reached at the time of the Armistice, and a considerable task of readjustment and reconstruction falls on the new Commission, in a region inhabited by a concentrated mining and industrial population with a strong local organization of its own. It should be noted that, besides the general obligation to consult a local legislative assembly, it is provided that “in fixing the conditions and hours of labor for men, women, and children, the Governing Commission is to take into consideration the wishes expressed by the local labor organizations, as well as the principles adopted by the League of Nations,”[41] so that a progressive policy is clearly laid down. Moreover, by virtue of its geographical position, the labor of the Saar should be able to secure conditions at least as favorable as in adjoining regions, while, with a plebiscite in view, the French state administration of the mines will have every reason to maintain good relations with the mining population. At the same time neither France nor the Commission will have any reason for holding back the production of coal or the general industrial development of the district in favor of the mines and factories of Westphalia. In any event the people of the Saar will be in a position to decide for themselves, district by district, after actual experience of the new regime; nor are they likely to welcome the proposal of an ardent revisionist of the treaty of Versailles, who, while admitting that the arrangements respecting the Saar should stand for ten years, would take away from the inhabitants all opportunity of voting as to their future.[42] If government by the League of Nations is as “odious” as the German delegates declared at Versailles, then ten years of it is as indefensible in principle as fifteen. But if perchance the League’s Commission should prove less odious than its enemies anticipate, the fact will be worth recording for the sake of the League as well as of the people directly concerned.