But lack of lubricating oils and the prodigious wear and tear of the war, not compensated by normal repairs, had already reduced the German railway system to a low state of efficiency.

The further heavy losses under the Treaty will confirm this state of affairs for some time to come, and are a substantial aggravation of the difficulties of the coal problem and of export industry generally.
(iii.) There remain the clauses relating to the river system of Germany.
These are largely unnecessary and are so little related to the supposed aims of the Allies that their purport is generally unknown.

Yet they constitute an unprecedented interference with a country's domestic arrangements and are capable of being so operated as to take from Germany all effective control over her own transport system.

In their present form they are incapable of justification; but some simple changes might transform them into a reasonable instrument.
Most of the principal rivers of Germany have their source or their outlet in non-German territory.

The Rhine, rising in Switzerland, is now a frontier river for a part of its course, and finds the sea in Holland; the Danube rises in Germany but flows over its greater length elsewhere; the Elbe rises in the mountains of Bohemia, now called Czecho-Slovakia; the Oder traverses Lower Silesia; and the Niemen now bounds the frontier of East Prussia and has its source in Russia.