As you travel through the Saar district on the way from Berlin to Paris, it is difficult to realize that these lovely wooded hills are part of one of the densest industrial areas of Western Europe. Further on, as the railway runs through a chain of large industrial villages, tall chimneys and the smoke of blast furnaces appear, but even here there is enough woodland visible to make the Saar valley look quite different from any vista in England’s Black Country. ‘This’, the affable German gentleman sitting opposite will tell you, for no German is averse to giving information with perhaps a dash of propaganda thrown in, ‘is because the coal mines have always been government property, and so have the forests, and one is not allowed to spoil the other. See how German the country looks,’ he adds eagerly, ‘there can be no doubt of how the people will vote when the plebiscite is held.’ Certainly the country looks very German, with the trim little houses and stocky thick-set people. There are even plenty of the new German flags to be seen hanging from the windows, black, white and red, with here and there a swastika. All this is German enough but (if you have just left Germany) there seems to be something missing. Where are all the brown uniforms? ‘Forbidden by the Governing Commission,’ you will be answered gloomily, if you voice your question aloud. Whereupon it will be explained to you that here the Government is not German at all, it is run by the League of Nations.