I have been in every portion of the Occupied Area and have had various opportunities of studying the temper of the people. Generally speaking, that temper is good in the Rhineland proper, and a visitor is not conscious of any obvious friction. A straightforward military occupation, disagreeable though it may be for the conquered race, is laid down in precise terms. Every one knows what to expect, and the situation is for the most part accepted with philosophy. Very different were matters in the Saar. You could not walk down the main street of Saarbrücken without feeling the atmosphere charged with hostility. The spirit of the town was angry and disgruntled. Every German to whom we spoke seemed on the verge of an outburst. We found ourselves not a little embarrassed by the obvious desire to confide grievances to us about the French--grievances naturally which we had no desire to hear. Hotel waiters are beings who usually float with the times and are not concerned to challenge authority. But without one word of warning a Saarbrücken waiter, who knew England well, broke into words of angry declamation. How should we English like a foreign commission to come and take a piece out of Yorkshire and hand it over to an alien government? Should we accept such a state of affairs without protest: should we be worth anything if we did? I retorted sharply with some remark about Alsace-Lorraine, but I knew the ground was unsound. Until two wrongs make a right, the Saar occupation must lead to many searchings of heart among Allied nations who have any regard for consistency in political professions of faith. Why has the League of Nations undertaken this task? Thankless tasks the League has no right to shirk; a false position such as this is another matter. The Treaty provides for two Commissions under the League: one a Boundary Commission of which a British officer is Chairman; the other a Governing Commission over which a Frenchman presides. The Boundary Commission has to delimitate the frontiers of the temporary state, and in separating towns and villages, all purely German, one from another to make the economic division between friends and relations as little harsh as possible. It is not desired, for example, that a village should be cut off from its water supply, or that workmen should be forced to cross a frontier in the course of their daily toil. The Commission hears the views of the inhabitants, and has shown them every consideration in its power. Even so, very hard cases are bound to arise owing to the homogeneous character of the country. The frontier line is necessarily arbitrary and artificial. Friends and kinsmen find themselves separated one from another; villages divided from their natural markets by the barrier of a French customs system.