in which case the above
provision is not applicable. Government, State, and Municipal property,
on the other hand, is to be ceded to France without any credit being
given for it. This includes the railway system of the two provinces,
together with its rolling-stock.[19] But while the property is taken
over, liabilities contracted in respect of it in the form of public
debts of any kind remain the liability of Germany.[20] The provinces
also return to French sovereignty free and quit of their share of German
war or pre-war dead-weight debt; nor does Germany receive a credit on
this account in respect of Reparation.

(4) The expropriation of German private property is not limited,
however, to the ex-German colonies and Alsace-Lorraine. The treatment of
such property forms, indeed, a very significant and material section of
the Treaty, which has not received as much attention as it merits,
although it was the subject of exceptionally violent objection on the
part of the German delegates at Versailles. So far as I know, there is
no precedent in any peace treaty of recent history for the treatment of
private property set forth below, and the German representatives urged
that the precedent now established strikes a dangerous and immoral blow
at the security of private property everywhere. This is an exaggeration,
and the sharp distinction, approved by custom and convention during the
past two centuries, between the property and rights of a State and the
property and rights of its nationals is an artificial one, which is
being rapidly put out of date by many other influences than the Peace
Treaty, and is inappropriate to modern socialistic conceptions of the
relations between the State and its citizens. It is true, however, that
the Treaty strikes a destructive blow at a conception which lies at the
root of much of so-called international law, as this has been expounded
hitherto.

The principal provisions relating to the expropriation of German private
property situated outside the frontiers of Germany, as these are now
determined, are overlapping in their incidence, and the more drastic
would seem in some cases to render the others unnecessary. Generally
speaking, however, the more drastic and extensive provisions are not so
precisely framed as those of more particular and limited application.
They are as follows:--

(_a_) The Allies "reserve the right to retain and liquidate all
property, rights and interests belonging at