It was not true, before the War, to say that Germany had to expand her frontiers to feed her population. It is true that with her, as with us, her soil did not produce the food needed for the populations living on it; as with us, about fifteen millions were being fed by means of trade with territories which politically she did not 'own,' and did not need to 'own'--with Russia, with South America, with Asia, with our own Colonies. Like us Germany was turning her coal and iron into bread. The process could have gone on almost indefinitely, so long as the coal and iron lasted, as the tendency to territorial division of labour was being intensified by the development of transport and invention. (The pressure of the population on the food resources of these islands was possibly greater under the Heptarchy than at present, when they support forty-five millions.) Under the old economic order conquest meant, not a transfer of wealth from one set of persons to another--for the soil of Alsace, for instance, remained in the hands of those who had owned it under France--but a change of administration. The change may have been as unwarrantable and oppressive as you will, but it did not involve economic strangulation of the conquered peoples or any very fundamental economic change at all. French economic life did not wither as the result of the changes of frontier in 1872, and French factories were not shut off from raw material, French cities were not stricken with starvation as the result of France's defeat. Her economic and financial recovery was extraordinarily rapid; her financial position a year or two after the War was sounder than that of Germany. It seemed, therefore, that if Germany, of all nations, and Bismarck, of all statesmen, could thus respect the convention which after war secured the immunity of private trade and property, it must indeed be deeply rooted in international comity. Indeed, the 'trans-national' economic activities of individuals, which had ensued so widespread an international economy, and the principle of the immunity of private property from seizure after conquest, had become so firmly rooted in international relationship as to survive all the changes of war and conquest. They were based on a principle that had received recognition in English Treaties dating back to the time of Magna Carta, and that had gradually become a convention of international relationship. At Versailles the Germans pointed out that their country was certainly not left with resources to feed its population. The Allies replied to that, not by denying the fact--to which their own advisers, like Mr Hoover, have indeed pointedly called attention--but as follows:-- 'It would appear to be a fundamental fallacy that the political control of a country is essential in order to procure a reasonable share of its products. Such a proposal finds no foundation in economic law or history.'[21]