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 Alsace-Lorraine; 
 
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 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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ALSACE - LORRAINE 
 
Alsace-Lorraine 
 
 A Study in Conquest: 1913 
 
 By 
 DAVID STARR JORDAN 
 
 IPS 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
 5 
 
Copyright 1916 
 The Bobbs-Merriix Com pakt 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 BRAUNWORTH ft CO. 
 
 BOOK MANUFAGTURCflB 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. V. 
 
TO THE 
 
 "FRIEDENSFREUNDB" 
 
 or 
 
 ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
*On changerait plutot le cceur en place 
 Que de changer la vieille Alsace." (Old rhyme.) 
 
 "Die beste Grenzefestung ist ein 
 zufiriedenes Grenzevolk." (Jacques Schlumberger.) 
 
 "The noblest sign of Culture is 
 respect for the Liberties of other people." (Schiller.) 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 In his clever analysis of the "German Enigma," 
 Georges Bourdon uses these words : "We may speak 
 of Alsace-Lorraine; it is better to listen while she 
 speaks."* 
 
 The present volume is the result of an attempt 
 thus to listen while Alsace-Lorraine spoke for her- 
 self. In the summer of 1913 the writer visited the 
 chief towns in the provinces and had speech with 
 many good men and women representing every pos- 
 sible point of view. They freely and frankly ex- 
 pressed their hopes and fears. 'Their opinions are 
 summed up here as far as possible in their own lan- 
 guage as expressed in condensed translation from 
 both German and French. In general, each quota- 
 tion is typical of the opinions of hundreds of men 
 and women. Except in a few cases in which I quote 
 from articles in print, I mention no names, as in 
 these tense times I would subject no individual to 
 personal criticism. Whatever value the book may 
 now have lies in its being in a sense a historical 
 
 * 11 faut porter d' Alsace-Lorraine, il vaut mieux icouter 
 quond elle parle." (L'£uigme Allemaude.) 
 
PEEFATOEY NOTE 
 
 document, a record of things as they were before 
 the great crash came. In its way, it is a "Moriturl 
 Salutamus" of our own time — ^the last word of 
 those "about to die." For whatever the outcome of 
 the war which now rages in and over Alsace and 
 Lorraine, the life of those provinces can never 
 again be what it was in 1913. But shall not the 
 spirit survive as it has outlived lesser cataclysms? 
 The dread of war, its futility as well as its terrors, 
 formed a dominant note in Alsace-Lorraine in 1913. 
 Since then little information has come to me across 
 the lines. It is known that upper Alsace and Lor- 
 raine have suffered most pitifully, that many of 
 the "Nationalists" have been condemned under 
 charges of treason, and that some of these have 
 escaped to France. One Alsatian friend writes me 
 that he "had never thought war could be so cruel 
 and lawless and that oflScIals and people could so 
 lose every notion of morals and law." 
 
 The reader must bear in mind that this account 
 was written in the late summer of 1913. It stands 
 as then, save for some verbal changes and foot- 
 notes. Just before the outbreak of the war my 
 record closes. 
 
PSEFATOST NOTE 
 
 I am under special obligations to m j colleague and 
 companion, Professor Albert Leon Guerard, for 
 sympathetic interest and invaluable help. In the 
 magazine Nineteenth Century and After for Feb- 
 ruary, 1915, Professor Guerard gives a faithful 
 account of our experiences and of the views of the 
 people we met. 
 
 Part of my notes were printed in the Atlantic 
 Monthly for May, 1914!, under the title of "Alsace- 
 Lorraine, a Study in Conquest." I am indebted to 
 the editor, Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, for the privilege 
 of reprinting. 
 
 I am also under obligation to Miss Ruth Putnam, 
 author of the admirable volume, Alsace and Lor- 
 raine from Ccesar to Kaiser, for a sympathetic read- 
 ing of my manuscripts. Also, as usual, to my wife, 
 Jessie Knight Jordan, for continuous aid. 
 
 Stanford University. ^- ^' '^• 
 
 September, 1915. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAFTEB 
 
 I The 
 
 NlQHTMAEE OF EuEOPE" 
 
 The Border Provinces 
 Unification Through Hate and Fear 
 "The French Key to Germany" 
 "La Guerre de Revanche" 
 The People Not for War 
 Pan-Germanism . . . 
 "La Course Vers I'Ablme" 
 "Le Cauchemar de I'Europe' 
 Alsace-Lorraine, a Battleground 
 "Optants" ("Emigres") and "Immigrgs' 
 The Declaration of Alsace-Lorraine 
 The Protest of Alsace-Lorraine . . 
 
 II The Geeman Point of View . . . 
 "No Question of Alsace-Lorraine" . 
 The Pan-Germanist's View of Alsace 
 Elsass-Lothringen as Reichsland . 
 The Speech of Alsace-Lorraine . . 
 Germanic Origin of the Alsatians . 
 
 "Entwelschung" 
 
 The Zabern Affair 
 
 Ill AXSACE-LOBBAINE AS "RbICHSLAWd" 
 
 Autonomy in Alsace-Lorraine . 
 "Lois d'Exception" .... 
 Efforts Toward Conciliation 
 Alleged Mistakes in Management 
 Traditions of Freedom in Alsace 
 The Nationalists in Upper Alsace 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 10 
 
 11 
 
 13 
 
 16 
 
 19 
 
 21 
 
 24 
 24 
 32 
 33 
 35 
 36 
 38 
 42 
 
 48 
 48 
 50 
 54 
 65 
 70 
 80 
 
CONTENTS— Continued 
 
 CHAFTEB PAQB 
 
 IV The French Point of View 82 
 
 There Is a Question of Alsace-Lorraine . . 82 
 
 Attitude of Alsace 82 
 
 Alsace a "Buffer" State 85 
 
 Home Rule in Alsace-Lorraine 88 
 
 Democracy and Militarism Incompatible . 92 
 
 "War No Solution 96 
 
 Solution Through Franco-German Entente . 99 
 
 V Nationalism 108 
 
 The Nationalists in Alsace 108 
 
 Three Duties of Alsace 114 
 
ALSACE - LORRAINE 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 THE "nIGHTMAKB OF EUKOPe" 
 
 Whe Border Provinces 
 
 THE history of Alsace and Lorraine has 
 been that of a vigorous, intelligent, optimis- 
 tic, freedom-loving folk living on the border be- 
 tween great military powers and subjected at inter- 
 vals to deeds of violence and to the interruption of 
 all progress, industrial, social and intellectual. 
 Through no fault of their own, these provinces, as 
 the transition belt between France and Germany, 
 have become the crux of some of the most diiEcult 
 problems of Europe. Around the mourning figure 
 of Strasburg in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, 
 symbolic of the distressed province of Alsace, the 
 
 1 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 war spirit of France has rallied for forty years. 
 The France menaced with dissolution in 1871 was 
 again, in a fashion, unified by the emotions which 
 the fate of Alsace-Lorraine still inspires. The call 
 of "la patrie mutilee," "Notre deuil sera voire 
 peril," has become again, since the AflFair of Aga- 
 dir, the occasion if not the justification of that con- 
 tradiction in world-politics, a "republic in arms." 
 
 Unification Through Hate and Fear 
 
 On the other hand, the result of the seizure of 
 those provinces, and of the distrust that policy in- 
 spired, has tended directly to hold Germany to- 
 gether and indirectly to enforce a scale of military 
 expenditure which has appalled the world. This 
 again has hung as a dead weight on German prog- 
 ress, internal and external, material and spiritual. 
 It has helped to turn the nations' interests over to 
 the control of a blind militarism which rides glo- 
 riously toward a fall. It has been the core around 
 which the suicidal war preparedness of Europe has 
 crystallized. The Treaty of Frankfort which f ol- 
 
 2 
 
THE "NIGHTMARE OF EUROPE" 
 
 lowed the Franco-Prussian conflict was not a treaty 
 of peace. It was devised to keep hatred alive. Its 
 purpose was not alone to welcome back to the Ger- 
 man Empire the "lost brothers," but also to keep 
 Germany unified against France. !And thus it comes 
 at last that the question of Alsace-Lorraine has 
 helped to divide Europe into two hopeless alliances 
 for whose persistent antagonism no rational remedy 
 is in sight. 
 
 "Thus," observes William Martin, *'amid all her 
 griefs, it is the glorious role of Alsace-Lorraine to 
 safeguard the moral unity of two great nations con- 
 centrated on the same thought." 
 
 Yet all this arises through no fault of Alsace and 
 Lorraine. They have given no incitement for war. 
 Their part was passive. They are only the excuse 
 or the occasion for war talk. France can do noth- 
 ing to abate this condition, and Germany in Her 
 present temper has done nothing. 
 
 Germany says to her province of "Elsass-LotH- 
 ringen": "I will not give you freedom until I am 
 sure of your love." Alsace responds : "I can not love 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 jou till you set me free." Lorraine replies : "I am 
 not of your family; I can not understand your 
 ways." Then Germany says to France: "We can 
 not be friends until you forget." France answers : 
 "You will not let me forget, and so I can not." 
 
 This is the "vicious circle" {"le cercle vicieux") 
 which most good men in Alsace-Lorraine have hoped 
 some time to break. 
 
 "The Trench Key to Germany" 
 
 The people of these provinces, torn suddenly 
 from France as a result of incidents in which they 
 were not consulted, held by Germany avowedly not 
 for their own sake but also and primarily as ap- 
 pendages of their two strong fortresses, Strasburg 
 and Metz, have naturally passed through the gamut 
 of feelings instinctive to peoples conquered in war. 
 
 Through the open door of Strasburg and Metz, 
 according to Bismarck, German territory had 
 twenty-three times suffered from unprovoked in- 
 vasions by marauding hosts of France. It was the 
 plan of von Moltke to close these doors, to hold the 
 
THEi "NIGHTMARE OF EUROPE" 
 
 key of Prance and Germany — ^the "Clausis Germor 
 nice Galilee" of Louis XIV — in his hand, so that 
 such disturbances should forever cease. At the 
 Treaty of Frankfort in 1871, France threw the 
 provinces overboard to save herself from further 
 desolation. And ever since that time Alsace-Lor- 
 raine has been "the wound in the side" — "la plaie 
 dans les ■flanks" — of the great empire to which the 
 provinces were attached. 
 
 "La Guerre de Revanche" 
 
 Through all these years the emotional patriot- 
 ism of France has looked forward for a turn of the 
 tide, a "war of revenge," as the word revanche is 
 inadequately translated. For forty years, mourn- 
 ing wreaths have been laid every day on the statue 
 called Strasburg in the Place de la Concorde in 
 Paris. For forty years the local press has used 
 the fate of Alsace to stir the shallow springs of na- 
 tional egotism or the deeper sources of national 
 patriotism. For forty years the boulevards have 
 dreamed of the "Guerre de Revanche," the "Guerre 
 
 & 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 d' Hormeur" which should restore to France her 
 abducted daughters of the Vosges. 
 
 But these emotions have slowly waned as the new 
 generations have come and gone. Since the collapse 
 of French militarism through the scandals of the 
 Dreyfus affair and the paltry heroics of Bou- 
 langer, France has lost faith in revenge bjr 
 force of arms. Serious men doubted first the pos- 
 sibility, then the wisdom and at last the righteous- 
 ness of the "War of Revenge." And of late, the 
 war spirit of France, such as it Is, has been due 
 mainly to fear. It has been engendered by the un- 
 precedented war preparations of Germany and by 
 the speeches and writings of the military-political 
 group known as the Pan-Germanists. 
 
 The People not for War. 
 
 It is certainly true (1913) that no considerable 
 body of rational men (outside the privileged groups 
 and the professional militarists) In either France or 
 Germany desires war or would look upon it other- 
 
 6 
 
THE "NIGHTMARE OF EUROPE" 
 
 wise than as a dire calamity. Costly and dangerous 
 war preparations are thrust on the people who per- 
 force acquiesce in the operation of machinery they 
 ido not control. Where the people do not govern, 
 somebody else does and in his own interest. And 
 the people of Germany have never had control of 
 the affairs, civil or military, of their own nation. 
 *'Any other country may possess an army," said a 
 German officer to Georges Bourdon, "the army pos- 
 sesses Germany."* And the possession of Ger- 
 many by the army is a constant menace to France. 
 The chauvinists of France are relatively harmless 
 in spite of their evident sincerity, for their influence 
 on politics is limited and waning though receiving 
 a new lease of life since the "Affaire Agadir" in 
 Morocco in 1911. The corresponding party in 
 Germany is more menacing because its members 
 constitute a privileged class near to the seat of 
 power and claiming the right to lead in national 
 patriotism. 
 
 * Bourdon: L'Snigme AXlennand. 
 1 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 PaTirGermanism 
 
 The Pan-Germanist League (Alldeutschtvm Ver- 
 band) was founded on April 9, 1891, on the oc- 
 casion of the exchange with Great Britain of Zan- 
 zibar for Heligoland, the former involving colonial, 
 the latter naval, possibilities. Its avowed purposes 
 were to deepen national feeling and to force the 
 German people to realize their duties as a world 
 power in directing the fortunes of "nations over- 
 seas." It designed to influence Germanic education 
 along nationalistic, militaristic and reactionary lines 
 and to bring about "practical results" in foreign 
 politics, that is, financial gains. Favorite slogans 
 or catchwords were "World Concerns," "Slavic 
 Peril," "British Menace," "British Monopoly," 
 "French Revenge." In all ways the League held 
 before the people the ''splendors of war" as con- 
 trasted with the impotence and the "immorality of 
 peace." It was primarily a backfire against democ- 
 racy and an instrument of spoliation. The organ- 
 ization now numbers about thirty thousand per- 
 
 8 
 
THE "NIGHTMARE OF EUROPE" 
 
 sons, two thousand three hundred in foreign lands, 
 the whole constituting an affiliation of military 
 groups, war-traders, landed gentry, clergy, ex- 
 ploiters, professors, travelers, business agents and 
 others, the common purpose being the extension 
 of German military force, of German domina- 
 tion in Europe as well as in Asia and Africa 
 and of German discipline generally. The group 
 has stood more or less opposed to the policies 
 of the German civil government, but by means 
 of pre-arranged crises and diplomatic compli- 
 cations, it has of late years carried the govern- 
 ment with it while keeping the popular feeling 
 aroused by struggles over non-essentials. The 
 Pan-Germanists have been especially active in at- 
 tempts to suppress the use of alien languages, 
 French, Danish, Polish and Flemish, and to unify 
 the politics and customs of the people on a rigidly 
 Prussian basis. In Alsace this process is known as 
 "Entwelschung" ("deforeignization"). Pan-Ger- 
 manism represents in fact the secret moving springs 
 of Prussian reaction, autocracy and militarism. 
 
 9 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 "La Course Vers VAhime" 
 
 At the present time (1913) Germany leads in 
 the scramble for military efficiency, in the "race 
 toward the abyss" — "la course vers Vahime," as the 
 French critics have called it. She is spending all 
 her national income and more in "national defense," 
 while under the impulse of fear and distress France 
 adds a third year to her two of conscription, each 
 nation thereby expanding the swollen fortunes of 
 its own war-traders by whom and for whom the rival 
 programs of "revenge" and "expansion" are 
 largely stimulated.* 
 
 • "The great calamity and danger of Europe to-day 
 are these enormous armaments. No honest statesman, 
 can say that he sees in the present attitude of politics 
 the necessity of war. No great power is threatened. 
 There is no menace to peace that could not be immedi- 
 ately dispelled by a firm protest of the peacefully dis- 
 posed majority of nations. There would be, therefore, no 
 danger to any people, but a vast and immediate gain to 
 all from a general disarmament. It need not be simul- 
 taneous. It is idle to say that France fears an invasion 
 from Prussia or Prussia from France, and an honest 
 understanding among the western nations would keep 
 the peace from the eastern side. 
 
 "Why then is this awful waste of youth and treasure 
 
 10 
 
[THE "NIGHTMARE OF EUROPE" 
 "Le Cauchemar de VEurope" 
 
 The jealousy and rivalry between France and 
 Germany have no fundamental reason. The hon- 
 est folk on both sides of the Rhine cherish no real 
 hatred of each other. An "entente cordiale" across 
 the Rhine is as natural as across the British chan- 
 nel.* If this were brought about, the bilingual 
 provinces of the Vosges could form, as they natur- 
 ally should, the bond of union and of sympathy be- 
 tween the nations they unite. As Canada forms 
 such a bond and a pledge of mutual understanding 
 between Britain and the United States, so should 
 Alsace-Lorraine act as a bridge between France and 
 
 continued? I believe from no other motive than to sus- 
 tain the waning prestige of kings. Armies are to-day 
 only useful in Europe to overcome the people, or hy 
 groundless wars to divert their attention from domestic 
 misrule. The false and wicked equilibrium by which 
 now the interest of one man weighs as heavily as those 
 of millions of his fellow-creatures would be utterly de- 
 stroyed." (John Hay to William H. Seward, February 5, 
 1868, from Life and Letters of John Hay, W. R. Thayer, 
 I, 303.) 
 
 *I)ie grossen Eultur-volker Jiassen Einander fticftfc" 
 XVon Ferlach.). 
 
 11 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 Germany. And that it may some time do so is tHe 
 fervent hope of all its good citizens. Not love of 
 France or hatred of Germany constitutes the prob- 
 lem. To the Alsatian the desire for freedom and 
 peace outweighs all other national questions. For 
 more than forty years these people have been men 
 without a country — ^in the German Empire but not 
 of it — ^French in spirit but shut away from France. 
 Somewhere, anywhere, they hope to find an honor- 
 able and equal place. But the Alsatian's conception 
 of freedom is that of individual opportunity, never 
 of being a cherished cog in the wheels of a military 
 or industrial machine in the guidance of which he 
 has no part. 
 
 It is said that the center of a cyclonic storm is 
 perfectly quiet. In Alsace-Lorraine as a storm 
 center, this assertion holds true. There is scarcely 
 any part of Europe where the war-spirit is lower 
 or the war-maker less in evidence. The chief prob- 
 lem of these people is to secure equal rights within 
 the empire, and the chief differences of opinion 
 hinge on whether these rights will be secured sooner 
 12 
 
THEi "NIGHTMARE OF EUROPE" 
 
 by insistence or by patience. If Alsace-Lorraine is 
 "the nightmare of Europe" — "le cauchemar de 
 I'Europe" — ^the fault lies with Europe, not with 
 Alsace-Lorraine.* 
 
 'Alsace-Lorrame, a Battle groumd 
 
 Alsace-Lorraine now finds no hope in armed con- 
 flict for its people have seen war and know what it 
 IS. The Franco-Prussian struggle was fought 
 mainly in Lorraine. In the seventeenth century, 
 Alsace was a battlefield of religion. The ancient 
 "Chronicles of Thann" tell how the land was rav- 
 aged in the Thirty Years' War, Towns destroyed 
 have never been rebuilt. In one commune, accord- 
 ing to the record, there was not for twelve years a 
 wedding, nor for fifteen years a baptism. 
 
 "So often as the Swedes gave battle to the Im- 
 perialists, so often did the Imperialists make war 
 upon the Swedes. It was an endless massacre !" 
 
 * "I have an apprehension that this violent laceration 
 and transfer is to lead us from bad to worse and to he 
 the beginning of a new series of European complica- 
 tions." (Gladstone to Granville; Morley'a Life of Glad- 
 atone.) 
 
 13 
 
[ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 Alsace still remembers too vividly the awful bom- 
 /bardment and ruthless burning of Strasburg in 
 which the library of the university was wantonly 
 fired and houses of non-combatants were destroyed, 
 while the people of Baden were merry-making 
 across the river.* She has not forgotten the bloody 
 fields of Weissenburg, Froschweiler and Worth. 
 
 • Professor Rudolphe Reuss (Eistoire d'Atsace) givea 
 these details: 
 
 "At Froscliweiler, the besieger, Worder (named 
 "Mordet" by the people) attempted to terrorize the peo- 
 ple so that they would exert an irresistible pressure on 
 the commandant to surrender. He spared no effort, 
 night or day, to increase this terror, giving not a mo- 
 ment's respite to the unfortunate people who, hidden in 
 cellars, saw the destruction or burning of their houses. 
 When any attempts were made to put out any fire, shells 
 were thrown directly upon the building in question. 
 
 "In Strasburg the people saw burned successively 
 the Church of the Dominicans, called the New Temple, 
 the museum of paintings and sculpture of the Aubette, 
 the two public libraries with their treasures, artistic and 
 literary and their precious manuscripts. The next night, 
 the roof of the immense nave of the cathedral took fire 
 and the copper plates melted in blue flames, a spectacle 
 of magnificent horror, while the projectiles demolished 
 the stone lace-work of the tower and broke the splendid 
 stained glass placed there by the piety of the middle 
 ages. The end sought by these savage acts was not at- 
 tained and the spectacle of so much ruin awoke In the 
 
 14 
 
THE "NIGHTMARE OF EUROPE" 
 
 Lorraine has before her waking eyes the campaign 
 of Metz, and the hideous scenes of Victor Hugo's 
 Annee Terrible of 1871. Not far from Metz is 
 the awful ravine of Gravelotte and the war-swept 
 heights of St. Privat, St. Hubert and Saint-Marie- 
 aux-Chenes. All about are the scenes of the futile 
 sorties of Bazaine from the fortress of Metz, to- 
 ward Noisseville and Colombey and westward along 
 the highway that leads through Gravelotte, Rezon- 
 ville and Vionville to the French border at Mars-la- 
 Tour. These communes for two hundred square 
 miles are graveyards rather than farms. And then 
 not far away in France, just outside the boundaries 
 
 hearts of the people a profound sorrow and fortified the 
 sentiment of hate and inextinguishable scorn for the 
 authors of these nameless destructions. 
 
 "During the siege, 300 civilians, men, women and 
 Children, were killed by the bombs of the enemy; more 
 than two thousand were wounded, and then when the 
 white flag was fired upon there was an explosion of 
 sorrow and of universal anger. During this time, the 
 incendiary bombs gathered in successively what re- 
 mained of public buildings, the palace of justice, the 
 railway station, the church of the civil hospital, the 
 theater, the prefecture, etc. At the end of the siege, the 
 citadel, the Faubourg des Pierres, the Faubourg Na- 
 tional, were for the most part a mass of ruins." 
 
 15 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 of Lorraine, occurred the horrors of Bazeilles, its 
 massacre of citizens as well as soldiers and the "ob- 
 scene sea of slaughter" of Sedan. The battles of 
 Napoleon III were largely fought on the soil of 
 Alsace-Lorraine, and the provinces themselves were 
 simply offered up in final sacrifice. 
 
 "Optcmts" ("EmigrSs") and "ImmigrSs" 
 
 War feeling may have its roots in these prov- 
 inces, but its manifestations are mainly outside. 
 After the treaty of Frankfort, "the optants," 
 "those who chose to remain French," were allowed 
 to leave the provinces. The number thus leaving in 
 the years 1871-73 is commonly stated to have been 
 270,000,* about one-fifth of the total population. 
 These constitute the "emigres" or emigrants. Ger- 
 mans who have since come in from "Old Germany" 
 are spoken of as "immigrSs," "vieux allemands," or 
 "Altdeutsche." After the original "optants" or 
 emigrants followed later about as many more, but 
 their number seems never to have been accurately 
 
 ♦This figure is probably in excess of the real num- 
 ber, which is apparently unknown. 
 
 16 
 
the; "NIGHTMARE OF EUROPE" 
 
 counted. According to a French authority,* 658,- 
 632 persons in all ultimately left Alsace-Lorraine. 
 September SO, 1872, was the last day of grace for 
 the "optamts." On that day, according to the au- 
 thor of La Prochaine Guerre, "All those who had 
 means of transportation rode in carts, wagons, car- 
 riages, running over the black roads. Whole fam- 
 ilies drove on their cattle. Old men dragged them- 
 selves on, leaning on the shoulders of young women 
 who bore at the breast new-bom children. Sick men 
 who wished not to die German were carried bodily 
 that they might draw their last breath on the fron- 
 tier of Nancy and thank heaven to die on the soil 
 of France. Another group in like fashion reached 
 the frontier of Belfort." 
 
 The spirit of these men and women who chose 
 thus to leave their native land expresses the noblest 
 impulses of the human heart. They abandoned 
 their homes, not primarily through hatred of Prus- 
 sia, not because they "would not become Germans,'* 
 
 * La Prochaine Guerre, par tin Soldat, 1884. This 
 author's estimate is probably also an exaggeration. 
 
 17 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 not even because they wished to remain French. 
 Their ruling motive was their unwillingness to 
 place themselves or their sons in such a position 
 where, as conscripts in a foreign army, they would 
 be forced to fight kinsmen and friends. It was no 
 passing emotion; it was grounded deep in religion 
 and conscience. We who to-day are spectators 
 should remember that those men and women of forty 
 years ago were not merely actors in the great trag- 
 edy of Europe, a play on which the curtain is not 
 yet rung down* — ^they were themselves the very 
 tragedy. 
 
 The imigrSs have naturally had a large influ- 
 ence on their kinsfolk in Alsace. Similarly, the 
 population of neighboring cities of France and 
 Switzerland, notably Nancy, Belfort and Basle, has 
 been greatly increased and strengthened by the in- 
 flux of Alsatians. In each of these cities the num- 
 ber of emigres runs into the thousands. Very 
 many continued their journey on to the United 
 States. "Since 1871, society in Lorraine has been 
 
 Written In 1913. 
 
 18 
 
THE "NIGHTMARE OF EUROPE" 
 
 skimmed by emigration as well as paralyzed by 
 persecution." 
 
 The University of Nancy, near the frontier in 
 French Lorraine, grew up through the influence of 
 the emigres, taking the place of the University of 
 Strasburg as the eastern outpost of French cul- 
 ture. The records of France show a long and im- 
 pressive list of scholars, men of science, poets, nov- 
 elists, statesmen , and generals of Alsatian or 
 Lorraine stock. 
 
 The Declaration of Alsace-Lorraine 
 
 After the Treaty of Frankfort, the twenty-eight 
 delegates of Alsace-Lorraine at the National As- 
 sembly at Bordeaux, on February 17, 1871, pre- 
 sented this solemn declaration : 
 
 "Alsace and Lorraine are opposed to alienation. 
 These two provinces, associated with France for 
 more than two centuries in good and in evil fortune 
 and constantly opposed to hostile attack, have con- 
 sistently sacrificed themselves in the cause of na- 
 tional greatness ; they have sealed with their blood 
 
 19 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 the indissoluble compact that binds them to French 
 unity. Under the present menace of foreign pre- 
 tensions, they affirm their unshakable fidelity in 
 the face of all obstacles and dangers, even under the 
 yoke of the invaders. With one accord, citizens who 
 have remained in their homes and the soldiers who 
 have hastened to join the colors proclaim by their 
 votes or by their action in the field, to Germany and 
 to the world, the unalterable determination of Al- 
 sace to remain French." 
 
 To Europe at large these words were addressed: 
 "Europe can not permit or ratify the abandon- 
 ment of Alsace and Lorraine. The civilized nations, 
 as guardians of justice and national rights, can not 
 remain indifferent to the fate of their neighbors 
 under pain of becoming in their turn victims of the 
 outrages they have tolerated. Modem Europe can 
 not allow a people to be seized like a herd of cattle ; 
 she can not continue deaf to the repeated protests 
 of threatened nationalities. She owes it to her in- 
 stinct of self-preservation to forbid such abuses of 
 her power. She knows, too, that the unity of 
 
THE "NIGHTMARE OF EUROPE" 
 
 France is now, as in the past, a guarantee of the 
 general order of the world, a barrier against the 
 spirit of conquest and invasion. Peace concluded 
 at the price of a cession of territory could be noth- 
 ing but a costly truce not a final peace. It would 
 be for all a cause of internal unrest, a permanent 
 and legitimate provocation of war," 
 
 The Protest of Alsace-Lorraine 
 
 Notwithstanding the declaration, the National 
 Assembly felt itself forced to abandon the two prov- 
 inces. When this decision was reached on March 1, 
 the final solemn protest was made by M. Grosjean. 
 
 "Delivered, in scorn of all justice and by an odi- 
 ous abuse of force^ to foreign domination, we have 
 one last duty to perform. We declare once for all 
 nidi and void an agreement which disposes of us 
 without our consent. The vindication of our rights 
 rests forever open to all and to each one in the form 
 and in the degree his conscience shall dictate. In 
 the moment we quit this hall, the supreme thought 
 we find in the bottom of our hearts is a thought of 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 unutterable attachment to the land from which in 
 violence we are torn. Our brothers of Alsace and 
 of Lorraine, separated at this moment from the 
 common family, will preserve to France, absent 
 from their hearthstones, an affection faithful to the 
 day when she shall return to take her place again."* 
 
 Then on March 24, turning toward Germany, 
 Frederic Hartmann spoke these words, classical 
 and historic, the key to the whole question of Al- 
 sace-Lorraine : 
 
 "By the fact that you have conquered us, you 
 owe us a status in law, a civil and political constitu- 
 
 * "Livr4s an mipris de toute justice, et par un odieux 
 ahus de ta force, A la domination de V6tranger, nous 
 avons un dernier devoir A remplir. Nous d6clarons en- 
 core une fois nul et non avenu un pacte qui dispose de 
 nous sans notre consentement. La revendication de nos 
 droits reste d jamais ouverte d tous et chacun dans la 
 forme et d, la mesure que notre conscience nous dictera. 
 Au moment de quitter cette enceinte, la pensie supreme 
 que nous trouvons au fond de nos cceurs est une pens4e 
 d'inaltiraile atta<:Jiment & la patrie dont nous sommes 
 Viotemment arracMs. Nos frires ff Alsace et de Lor- 
 raine sipards en ce moment de la famille commune con- 
 servent d la France absente de leurs foyers, une affec- 
 tion fiddle, fusqu'au jour oH elle viendra y reprendre sa 
 place." 
 
THE ^'NIGHTMARE OF EUROPE" 
 
 tion in harmony with our traditions and with our 
 customs."* But this wise advice passed unheeded. 
 "Germany looked for the reaping of fruit she did 
 not know how to cultivate."! 
 
 * "Par cela que vous nous avez conquis, vous nous 
 deves un 6tat Ugal, une constitution politique et civile 
 en harmonie avec nos traditions et nos tnoeurs." 
 
 tPaul Albert Helmer, Alsace under German Rule. 
 
II 
 
 THE GEKMAN POINT OF VIEW! 
 
 "No Question of Alsace-Lorrame" 
 
 TO !ALL inquiries concerning Alsace-Lorraine, 
 the German answer begins invariably with 
 the words, "There is no question of Alsace-Lor- 
 raine." Amplifying this as the German response: 
 
 "There is no question of Alsace-Lorraine: the 
 land is German by tradition, by history, by lan- 
 guage, by conquest and by military necessity. Al- 
 sace-Lorraine must be forced to resume the Teuton- 
 ism her people had relinquished." 
 
 To this we may add the words of Professor von 
 Treitschke : "We know better how to govern Alsace 
 than the Alsatians know themselves." 
 
 Now to summarize the German position. In 
 German law it is claimed that Alsace and Lorraine 
 are territories won by conquest confirmed by the 
 M 
 
THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 Treaty of Frankfort. As such, all former rights 
 have lapsed and there remain only those that the 
 empire in its wisdom and friendliness may grant. 
 France has no further concern in the matter. The 
 relations in international law were settled once and 
 for all by the Treaty of Frankfort. "Alsace and 
 German Lorraine* were restored to the newly 
 founded German Empiref to which they belong. As 
 France tried for years to suppress the German 
 language and German culture in Alsace, J it becomes 
 Germany's national duty to wean these people from 
 the French." 
 
 *At the Treaty of Frankfort all of the old French 
 province of Alsace, save the city of Belfort and its en- 
 virons, was ceded to Germany, with about a third of old 
 Lorraine. The rest of Lorraine still remains in France. 
 
 t "That a newly founded institution could receive 
 tack territory it was too young to have lost seems a 
 trifle illogical." (Ruth Putnam.) 
 
 J There seems to be no historical foundation for this 
 statement. Ernest Renan asserts that France, almost 
 alone among the nations, has never used force to extend 
 her language. The efforts to strengthen nationality 
 through the unification of language has kept a large part 
 of central and eastern Europe in constant turmoil. This 
 Is notably true of the Balkans, of Austria, Poland and 
 Russia as well as of Germany. 
 
 26 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 Says Professor Wilhelm Forster, the astronomer 
 of Berlin :* 
 
 "Since France in 1866 demanded the whole left 
 bank of the Rhine and in 1870 attacked Germany 
 by force of arms, it became clear that Germany 
 must for her own security extend her borders across 
 the Rhine and not leave the powerful fortress of 
 Metz on her frontier any longer in French hands. 
 
 "But Germany has throughout treated the peo- 
 ple of Elsass-Lothringen in embittering fashion. 
 By this means, the painful influence of the conquest 
 on the feelings of the French people has been kept 
 alive and constantly renewed. In spite of this, a 
 vote by the people of Alsace-Lorraine would now 
 (September, 1913) probably show a majority in 
 favor of remaining part of Germany. This would 
 mainly be on economic grounds, as the fruit and 
 wine industry of Elsass-Lothringen is in closer re- 
 lation to the interests of Germany than those of 
 France. 
 
 "How can the relations between Germany and 
 
 * In a personal letter, September, 1913. 
 26 
 
THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 France be made better? Certainly through giving 
 the people of Elsass-Lothringen the greatest pos- 
 sible independence with freedom to continue to use 
 the French language and the like. To this end, 
 there must rule between Germany and France and 
 for that matter through Europe generally, a higher 
 socio-political relation than at present. This should 
 begin with a customs-union and with parliamentary 
 control. The International Court needs organiza- 
 tion and expansion in power until its jurisdiction 
 includes the whole earth." 
 
 Says Professor Rudolf Eucken of Jena:* 
 
 "Elsass-Lothringen is for us Germans no longer 
 
 a question. The land, the seat of an old German 
 
 race, is a piece of Germany; in its language and 
 
 its customs, German.f We Germans are sensitive 
 
 * In a personal letter, September, 1913. 
 
 t "This affirmation is too simple to apply to the com- 
 plex situation of a frontier country. As a fact, Alsace 
 even in the Middle Ages, though it spoke a Germanic 
 dialect, was in the orbit of French culture. The Gothic 
 artists who built Strasburg Cathedral came from the 
 Isle de France or had learned their art there." (P. A. 
 Helmer, Alsace under Germ<m Control, p. 8.) 
 
 27 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 to all discussion of this question by foreign people 
 as a revival of the French restlessness toward this 
 problem. Inside of Germany I wish to see granted 
 to Elsass-Lothringen all possible independence, but 
 that is a problem forever and wholly German." 
 
 (Here, however, is the crux of the problem: what 
 constitutes "all possible independence inside of Ger- 
 many"?) 
 
 The opinion of Doctor Hans Delbriick, professor 
 of history in Berlin, is stated as follows in an inter- 
 view published in the London Daily Mail for Au- 
 gust 30, 1913. 
 
 "Are you in earnest?" asks Professor Delbriick. 
 "Do you mean that I, a serious-minded German, 
 should waste your time and mine discussing such a 
 question? 
 
 "I can conceive of no other single question within 
 the scope of International politics, with the possible 
 exception of disarmament, on which the German na- 
 tion would chorus a more thundering 'No,' than of 
 surrendering the conquered provinces. Alsace-Lor- 
 raine's connection with the empire is the very last 
 g8 
 
THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 word of irrevocabiUty. We might as weU be asked 
 to surrender Prussia as to give up the territory 
 bought and paid for at Gravelotte, Mars-la-Tour, 
 St. Privat and Sedan. Restoration of Elsass-Loth- 
 ringen is not debatable for us in any form whatso- 
 ever. No proffer of territory in exchange anywhere 
 on the face of the globe could induce the German 
 government even to consider such a transaction. 
 The anti-German sentiment there is a nebulous and 
 vanishing force. It is kept up for the most part by 
 clerical agitators. Compare the condition of the 
 Roman Catholic church in France and in Germany 
 and you will find, with me, that it is very likely that 
 these men would be just as anti-French as they are 
 now anti-German were the tricolor to supplant the 
 black-white-red of Imperial Germany. Alsace-Lor- 
 raine now has a Parliament of its own under a 
 constitution which grants the inhabitants of the 
 provinces the maximum of political hberty and self- 
 government. France is confined to Metz and the 
 adjacent frontier regions. Alsace and Lorraine 
 were German long before they were French. Our 
 29 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 folk-song literature is replete with songs of Stras- 
 burg.* Goethe attended the university there. 
 When we took Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, we re- 
 gained what was our own. Why did we retake it? 
 Because the safety of German territory demanded 
 it. France openly coveted the left bank of the 
 Rhine. What else was the real underlying cause 
 of Napoleon's war? Alsace-Lorraine had to be 
 taken if that part of our Fatherland west of the 
 Rhine was to be permitted to develop in peace and 
 safety as an integral part of the German nation. 
 
 "Sir Joseph Compton Rickett tells us that the 
 restoration of Alsace-Lorraine would be the end 
 of revanche. ... It would be the very be- 
 ginning. The French would say : 'If the Germans 
 are supine enough to abandon Alsace and Lor- 
 raine, they will not be strong enough to resist 
 pressure still further East.' Our defensive posi- 
 tion, instead of being stronger, would be incom- 
 
 * "0 Btrasburg, meine Strashurg 
 Du wunderschone Stadt, 
 Die seit zwei hundert Jahren 
 So viel gelitten hat." 
 
THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 parably weaker after we had scuttled out of Metz 
 
 and Strasburg. We should be in exactly the same 
 
 perilous military situation as we were before 1870. 
 
 This is a state of things not even the most rabid 
 
 social democrat could tolerate. ... It would 
 
 be a pitiable politician and a sorry strategist who 
 
 would begin putting the national house in order 
 
 for the great emergency by abandoning the 'Watch 
 
 on the Rhine.' "* 
 
 In 1881 the Emperor William I stated the case 
 
 with extreme precision. "Germany would leave her 
 
 eighteen army corps and her 42,000,000 people 
 
 on the field of battle rather than surrender a single 
 
 stone of the territory won in 1870." 
 
 * As to the war of 1870-71, it is not clear that Napo- 
 leon III was primarily the aggressor. It is Bismarck's 
 claim that he entrapped the emperor of France into this 
 position and by means of a forged or altered telegram. 
 On both sides foreign war was welcomed as a cure for 
 difficulties at home. It was Treitschke's dictum that 
 foreign war is the swift remedy for disunion or waning 
 patriotism. We may put the case in this form: Each 
 emperor wagered his Rhine provinces in the game of 
 war. The German won and by the rules of that game 
 Alsace-Lorraine went to Germany and that was the end 
 of it, the people not being consulted and under Imperial- 
 Ism having no rights to be considered. 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 The Pan-Germamst's View of Alsace 
 
 The view of the Pan-Germanist in regard to 
 the treatment of Alsace is set forth in an article 
 under the caption of "Ware Ich Kaiser" (Were I 
 Emperor), by Daniel Frymann, published in the 
 summer of 1913.* This runs substantially as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "Were I emperor, there would be a dictator, not 
 a Statthalter in authority. No student should en- 
 ter the University of Strasburg till he had spent 
 two years at a university elsewhere in Germany. 
 All private schools should be closed and all public 
 schools should be taught in German. There should 
 be no public meetings in which French is spoken, 
 and no private gatherings save in the presence of 
 a German official. No newspapers should be 
 printed in French, and each paragraph in French 
 should have by its side a German translation. Each 
 citizen as he comes of age should declare his eter- 
 
 ♦This appeared in the Elsdsser Courier, a German 
 paper In Colmar, as copied from the Strasiiirger Post, 
 in July, 1913. 
 
THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 nal allegiance to Germany. He should give his 
 pledge not to buy secretly any newspapers, books 
 or periodicals in French. All this under pain of 
 expulsion from the land." 
 
 'Elsass-Lothrmgen as Reichslcmd 
 
 Elsass-Lothringen has not been made a state of 
 the German Empire. It is not a member of the 
 Imperial Confederation. It is merely "Reichsland," 
 Empire's land ; that is, government land, to be ad- 
 ministered in the general interest of the federated 
 states, German authorities assert that its present 
 status is "almost exactly parallel with that of the 
 territories within the United States, or perhaps still 
 more exactly with that of the Federal District of 
 Columbia." The district is allowed certain priv- 
 ileges, not rights, of self-government, but not to 
 the prejudice or disadvantage of the recognized 
 states. As in the United States territories are held 
 In tutelage until they are ready for self-govern- 
 ment, so is Elsass-Lothringen held in training until 
 its people are ready for autonomy within the Ger- 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 man Empire. To this end, they must be educated 
 in the spirit of "Deutschthum" and must be im- 
 bued with Grerman traditions and with German cul- 
 ture. 
 
 "These pebple are Germans after all. Our pro- 
 fessors all tell us so. It is out of sheer perversity 
 that they call themselves French. And yet, the 
 more we cudgel them, the more French they claim 
 to be and the less they like us." 
 
 "Naturally, the business of Elsass-Lothringen 
 must be conducted in the German language. The 
 people must be familiar with German methods of 
 government and modes of thinking. They must 
 think as Germans, for the Empire is not an assem- 
 blage of states and cities and people. It is a con- 
 federation of Germans, by Germans, and for the 
 Germans." 
 
 All this, it is claimed, involves no real hardship, 
 for the same requirements exist throughout the 
 Empire, and all residents of the Empire, Danes 
 and Poles, Saxons, Swabians, Bavarians and Prus- 
 sians alike, must conform to it. All Germany is 
 
THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 '^under the ferule" of training in "Deutschfhwm." 
 Meanwhile, it is asserted, German rule in Alsace- 
 Lorraine is consideration itself compared with 
 methods employed by other nations in dealing with 
 a conquered people. This is, of course, quite true 
 If Germany is to be contrasted with some other 
 nations, Hussia, Poland, Serbia and Turkey, for in- 
 stance. Instead of the knout or the dagger, Prus- 
 sia inflicts pinpricks. 
 
 The Speech of Alsace-Lorraine 
 
 It is to be noted that of over two millions of 
 people in Alsace-Lorraine (about 1,600,000 in Al- 
 sace, 600,000 in German Lorraine) only about one- 
 sixth are of French origin or even speak a French 
 dialect as a mother-tongue. Yet only the humblest 
 peasants are without knowledge of French, which 
 language is spoken by preference by aU the edu- 
 cated classes. In German Lorraine more than half 
 the population, those of the northeastern part 
 (Saarburg, etc.) speak a German dialect. In a 
 small part of the north (about Diedenhofen) the 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 inhabitants use the patois, also Germanic, of their 
 neighbors of Luxemburg. In Alsace, the boundary 
 between French and German dialects follows ap- 
 proximately the summit line of the Vosges, the 
 French overflowing from the barren rounded sum- 
 mits (crossed by "strategic railways" which reach 
 only to the French frontier) into a number of 
 valleys on the eastern slope, Belfort, the only city 
 in French Alsace, is most intensely French. The 
 Germans failed to capture its strong fortress in 
 the war of 1870 and in the final settlement they 
 left, perforce, this town to France. 
 
 But in Alsace almost everywhere, as in Lorraine, 
 French is the language of culture, the speech pre- 
 ferred among the well-to-do. 
 
 Germanic Origin of the Alsatians 
 
 The originally Germanic character of the peo- 
 ple of Alsace is plainly shown by the family names. 
 Passing down Rufacherstrasse, a leading street 
 In Colmar, I note these names on the door-plates 
 and signs : Lange, Heilgendorf , Scherrer, SchultZj 
 36 
 
THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 Weill, Schonbrod, Schaffer, Casper, Roths, Hacker, 
 Didier, Werkemann, Biirger, Spira, Meyer, Pfleger, 
 Wilberger, Klein, Schanzler, Becker, Luttin, Levy, 
 Rueff, Moore, Geegert, Hidgen, Eglensdorfer, 
 Heyne, Schoy, Kayser, Hild, Wertheim, Gerwig, 
 Heimburger, Wyler, Burlen, Albrecht, Schuler, 
 Helmer, Lentz, Blum, Matter, Engasser, Witters- 
 heim. 
 
 In the directory of Miihlhausfn, tlie first forty- 
 six names are Aab, Abegy,, Ab^le, Aberlen, Aber- 
 mann, Aberth, Abraham, Abrahamsohn, Abry, Abt, 
 Ach, Achenbach, Acker, Ackerer, Ackermann, 
 Adam, Adams, Adelbrecht, Adelhold, Adis, Adler, 
 Adloff, Adelung, Adolph, Adnau, Achen, Aeble, 
 Aeby, Aegister, Aegler, Aeschmann, Agde, Agrip- 
 pino, Ahr, Ahrens, Aicheler, Aischelmann, Aigle, 
 Aichinger, Aigner, Ailuger, Albanesius, Alber, Al- 
 bert, Albich, Albinus. 
 
 But two of these (Abele, Aigle) have a French 
 origin, and one (Adams) is apparently English. 
 Three (Agrippino, Albinesius and Albinus) repre- 
 sent the Teutonized Latin widely spread over Ger- 
 
 37 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 many in an earlier day. It is worth noting that 
 all the republican or nationalist leaders of Upper 
 Alsace have German names, while in Lorraine, in 
 several cases, German conservatism is masked b]g 
 names unqualifiedly French. 
 
 Bilingual the provinces are to-day and for the 
 most part bilingual they have been for genera- 
 tions. Really they are tri-lingual, for the German 
 and French dialects of their peasants diverge 
 widely from the speech of Berlin or Paris. 
 
 "Entwelschung" 
 
 To revert to the process of "Entwelschung," its 
 advocates maintain that it is salutary and neces- 
 sary. The continuity and efficiency of the Empire 
 demand it. It has been honestly and persistently 
 pursued in EIsass-Lothringen for forty years, and 
 it is open to no question or revision. In so far 
 as it has failed, the fault lies, it is argued, with 
 hesitation or leniency in administration, not with 
 the plan itself. 
 
 The "Affaire de Noisseville" in 1908 may serve 
 
THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 as an example. The Statthalter (governor). Count 
 Zeppelin, permitted the building of a monument 
 to the French soldiers who fell at Noisseville. Its 
 dedication was witnessed by one hundred thousand 
 people. These waved the tricolor and sang The 
 Marseillaise (itself an Alsatian tune composed; at 
 Strasburg by Rouget de I'Isle) in defiance of all 
 proprieties. The effect was to produce a revival of 
 French sympathy which swept Lorraine off her feet 
 and threatened to undo in an hour the loyalty re- 
 sulting from years of patient German tutelage. 
 
 The German outlook for the future does not 
 grow promising. This the officials sometimes un- 
 willingly admit. "IcJi bin pessimist" ("I am pessi- 
 mistic"), says one of these. Lorraine abuts on 
 France as does Alsace on Switzerland. Paris is 
 nearer to each than is Berlin. For the well-to-do 
 it is within a day's run in an automobile. The 
 freedom of France and of Switzerland has its ef- 
 fect on the temper of the people, for it appeals 
 to their own traditional spirit. The most persistent 
 opposition to the Prussian regime now appears in 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 the (districts most thoroughly Germanic by blood. 
 It centers especially in Ober-Elsass and in its two 
 chief cities of Colmar and Miihlhausen, which town 
 Its inhabitants persist in calling "Mulhouse," a 
 meaningless French derivative of a dialect form for 
 millhouses. 
 
 But whatever the discouragements, it is certain 
 in the minds of the German authorities that Elsass- 
 Lothringen can not be made an independent nation, 
 nor yet a free state of the Empire. Still less can 
 it be given back to France. To the Germans, Al- 
 sace is German at heart and belongs in the German 
 Empire. To abandon even French Lothringen 
 would be to dishonor the fifty thousand graves of 
 brave Germans who gave their lives to win back the 
 lost provinces and to secure the German Rhine. The 
 international politics of Germany hinge on roman- 
 tic sentiment as well as on the military value of 
 its fortresses and the "military necessity" provided 
 by the iron mines of Eastern Lorraine. But even 
 Eastern Lorraine, German by blood and speech, 
 40 
 
THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 shares its love of freedom with Alsace.* In all the 
 provinces the political unrest is more freely ex- 
 pressed by men of Germanic blood than by the 
 French. 
 
 In the words of a German secretary at Stras- 
 burg, "Though forty years is a long period in the 
 lifetime of a man, still longer in that of a woman, 
 it is but a moment in the history of a race. Al- 
 sace lies where races meet. She has been part of 
 Germany, of Austria, of France, of Germany 
 again. She has resisted all changes with charac- 
 teristic obstinacy. She has been reconciled, more 
 or less, with each in turn, and she will be recon- 
 ciled again." The re-establishment of the mon- 
 archy in France was strenuously opposed by Al- 
 sace, and she voted persistently and almost alone 
 against the overwhelming majority which confirmed 
 the "Second Empire." 
 
 * "German-speaking Lorraine is at heart the most 
 French and anti-German part of the province." "Ober- 
 Elsass is the most troublesome part." (A German 
 editor.) 
 
 41 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 The Zabern Affair 
 
 The affair at Zabern (Saverne) took place in 
 the fall of 1913, after my visit to Alsace. I may 
 here briefly describe it, following the accounts given 
 by Eduard Bernstein of Berlin in the London Na- 
 tion, December, 1913, and January, 1914, 
 
 Zabern is a small town at the foot of the Vosges 
 in Northern Alsace. A garrison of soldiers is sta- 
 tioned there. A young lieutenant, von Forstner, 
 a boy barely of age, offered ten marks from his 
 pocket to any recruit who should cut down any 
 "Wacke" who might assail him. "Wacke" (vaga- 
 bond) is a military slang word used to designate 
 Alsatians. Afterward the lieutenant walked 
 through the village with a patrol of three or four 
 soldiers whom he ordered to stand with fixed bayo- 
 nets before a shop where he bought chocolates and 
 cigars. Later, placing a loaded revolver beside 
 his plate in a restaurant, he pierced the biU of fare 
 with his sword because it contained the French word 
 "poularde" for chicken. 
 
THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 It is possible that the people who saw this may 
 have laughed at him. But to laugh at this boy 
 would be to discredit the uniform which he wore. 
 The colonel in command, von Reuter, took the af- 
 fair very seriously, made the garrison ready for 
 siege, had the open places in the town cleared by 
 force, and without consulting the civil authorities, 
 arrested men right and left, including among them 
 the judge and other members of the court on their 
 way from the court room. All of these, the judge 
 excepted, in spite of official protest, were shut up 
 in a coal cellar until morning. Incidental to this, 
 the boy lieutenant made an onslaught on a group 
 alleged to have laughed at him and severely slashed 
 a lame shoemaker, striking him on the head with 
 the sword. These acts were plainly illegal, but 
 the colonel assumed entire responsibility for them. 
 He further expressed a regret that he had not 
 used a machine gun on a community so devoid of 
 respect for the uniform. The lieutenant made the 
 plea that he could not fight a duel with a cobbler, 
 a man beneath his class. Yon Falkenhayn, Min- 
 ,43 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 ister of War at Berlin, suggested that as an alter- 
 native he might have run his sword through the 
 first offender. 
 
 A court-martial decreed a mild punishment for 
 von Forstner, but its findings were speedily quashed 
 in the interest of the "sanctity of the King's uni- 
 form." In spite of dissatisfaction in the Reichs- 
 tag, the acts of the officers at Zabem were fully 
 upheld by the Imperial authorities. It appears that 
 "Lieutenant von Forstner struck a lame bootmaker 
 with his sword and wounded him in the head be- 
 cause he feared that the unarmed man might try 
 to assault him, although the lieutenant was pro- 
 tected by a number of musketeers." This lieutenant 
 and another concerned "were obviously unconscious 
 of the illegal nature of their acts," the responsibil- 
 ity for which was fully assumed by the colonel 
 in command. And the final result, in spite of the 
 protests In the Reichstag and elsewhere, was the 
 complete victory of the military group.* The civil 
 
 * " 'Comrade' Peirotes, representing the people of Za- 
 barn, quoted the words of the former chancellor. Prince 
 
 41 
 
THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 authorities were censured for not protecting tHe 
 army from ridicule, and the civil authority in Ger- 
 many was definitely placed below martial law. In 
 the words of the foreign minister, von Jagow, "The 
 uniform of the army is a symbol of the sovereignty 
 of the state, and no insult to it must therefore be 
 suffered without immediate repression," A royal 
 decree of 1820 was resuscitated to cover the case. 
 "It authorizes military officers to take the law into 
 their own hands when they are convinced that the 
 civil authorities have not the power or the will to 
 repress disorder. This decree was promulgated 
 by Metternich at the period of the worst European 
 reaction against the movement for constitutional 
 government. It has long since been abrogated by 
 new laws and prescriptions and it has consequently 
 fallen into oblivion. Doubtless Colonel von Renter 
 
 Hohenlolie: 'They desire to drive the population of 
 Alsace-Lorraine to desperation. They try to provoke 
 uprisings to drown them in blood. We used to speak in 
 our country of a second or military government. To-day 
 we cannot speak of a second or military government, 
 to-day the military authorities are the government!'" 
 (Walling: The Socialists and the War, p. 85.) 
 
 45 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 knew nothing of its existence, and it was probably 
 discovered by some student searching for precedents 
 for the colonel's conduct." This event definitely 
 fixed the supremacy of military over civil authority. 
 Yet, as Bernstein further observes : "The spirit of 
 the German people is hardly more bellicose than that 
 of the British people. Men submit to militarism 
 for all sorts of reasons, except for its real raison 
 d'etre— WAR." 
 
 Doctor Ludwig Frank, the brilliant Socialist 
 leader,* earnestly protested in the Reichstag that 
 Civil Law and Civil Government must be secured 
 against military infringement. "We ask no revolu- 
 tionary deeds from you (the Reichstag). We only 
 hope that you may have the courage to apply the 
 rights you already possess, that you may have the 
 courage to be victors. Gentlemen over there (the 
 Conservatives) take the title of their rights from the 
 debris of the past. We take our rights and our 
 power from the foundations of the present. We, 
 'the mixed company calling itself the Reichstag'; 
 
 * Since killed In battle, 1914. 
 46 
 
THE GERMAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 we, 'the rabble* with the millions and millions be- 
 hind us; we are the true and veritable framers of 
 Germany's future."* 
 
 "Reform in Germany," says Bernstein, *'would 
 mean political revolution. It would mean the total 
 breakdown of the Jimker influence In Prussia, which 
 means the transformation of the historical Prussia 
 into something else. And people with otherwise 
 quite advanced ideas look upon this contingency as 
 a sort of abyss." 
 
 After this overthrow of civil authority and the 
 failure of the Reichstag to remedy the condition, 
 von Wedel, Statthalter of Alsace-Lorraine, and 
 Mandel, Secretary, tendered their resignations as 
 unwilling to go any further in the direction of 
 repression. 
 
 * Walling, The Socialists and the War, 
 
Ill 
 
 Autonomy im Alsace-Lorraine 
 
 JUST now (1913) Elsass-Lothringen asks for 
 autonomy, for Home Rule within the Empire. 
 No man familiar with imperial politics expects or 
 hopes to see the region returned to France. It is ar- 
 gued by some Germans that the Alsatians demand 
 Home Rule not for the good of the people, but be- 
 cause it prevails in the other twenty-five states, and 
 [Alsatians want all privileges their neighbors enjoy. 
 Under German law, however, Elsass-Lothringen is 
 not a state, but a territory of the Empire, "Reichs- 
 land." It was placed in this peculiar position as 
 a contribution to the unification of Germany. Be- 
 ing owned jointly by each and all of the states, 
 it was expected that common possession would add 
 to the cement which holds them together and under 
 the protection and domination of Prussia. 
 48 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 The "Reichsland" has no executive head of its 
 own choosing. It is governed from Berlin by a 
 Statthalter appointed by the Emperor, the power 
 of the Statthalter and his Ministerium at Stras- 
 burg being derived from the Emperor. The con- 
 stitution of the "Reichsland" was granted from 
 Berlin (in 1911) at the instance of Prince von 
 Billow. It was not framed by the people nor their 
 representatives. It was not accepted by them, nor 
 Is it subject to their amendment. It can be recalled 
 at any time at the will of the Bundesrath and 
 Reichstag. 
 
 In strict theory, therefore, the "Reichsland" 
 should have no representation in the Imperial Coun- 
 cils. Three votes in the Reichstag are, however, 
 granted to Elsass-Lothringen in a total of sixty- 
 one, but with the peculiar provision that such votes 
 are not to count if Prussia should thereby gain a 
 majority. The device was adopted in the interest 
 of the smaller states as a slight protection against 
 overshadowing by the great one. 
 
 Under the constitution of Elsass-Lothringen the 
 49 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 upper chamber of the Landtag or local assembly 
 is made up in eccentric fashion. About half of the 
 deputies are appointed by the Emperor; most of 
 the others are chosen as representatives of religious 
 bodies, chambers of commerce and other organiza- 
 tions, while a few are elected by the people. 
 
 "Lois d'Exception" 
 
 Much of the local friction in Elsass-Lothringen 
 centers about edicts or "laws of special protection" 
 (Abwehrgesetze), known locally as "laws of excep- 
 tion" (lois d'exception). These measures, it is 
 claimed, are necessary in Alsace-Lorraine, as sim- 
 ilar or still more rigid statutes are required in 
 Schleswig-Holstein and Posen, both of which are 
 made parts of Prussia. "The necessity arises from 
 facts in the history or geography or temperament 
 of the provinces concerned. These districts all bor- 
 der on unfriendly nations, and from those emanate 
 influences which Germany finds it necessary to com- 
 bat." 
 
 50 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 Of the "laws of exception" I may name a few 
 which came to my attention: 
 
 The Germanization of the University of Stras- 
 burg. 
 
 The dissolution in Metz of "Sport" societies with 
 French bugles. 
 
 The dissolution of Souvenir Societies for the dec- 
 oration of French graves. 
 
 The suppression of the Alsatian Society of 
 Mechanical Construction (its leader being French). 
 The limitation (to about one in two weeks) of 
 the rendering of French plays. 
 
 The limitation of instruction in the French lan- 
 guage. This, in Metz, is given m German to stu- 
 dents who use French in daily speech and in their 
 games. The lessons occupy one hour a week. 
 
 The occasional banishment or imprisonment of 
 ardent "nationalists," or even of visitors from 
 Prance or Switzerland. 
 
 The revival for a time of the passport system in 
 order to exclude French relatives of Alsatian fam- 
 ilies. 
 
 61 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 The requirement of the use of German for busi- 
 ness signs and notices. 
 
 These and other similar regulations locally called 
 "coups d'epingle" (pin pricks), have been vari- 
 ously ignored or resented according to the temper 
 of individuals. Street signs can be written in 
 French by special permission only. Barbers have 
 been punished for calling themselves "Coiffeur" in- 
 stead of the now orthodox German "Friseur." The 
 menu of the hotel is now "Speisekarte" and its 
 highly technical French must be replaced or ac- 
 companied by its equivalent in unintelligible Ger- 
 man. The word "restaurant" can no longer be 
 used; an eating house is a "Restauration." A 
 dressmaker can not deal in "Modes," but in 
 "Moden." A merchant in Strasburg was fined for 
 announcing "Liquidation Totale"; it must be "To- 
 tale Liquidation." After paying the fine he put 
 up a sign: "Hier wird Deutsch gesprochen." 
 
 "The struggle against the French language," 
 says Paul D^rouMe, "is one of the most ridiculous 
 aspects of the pan-germanist campaign. French 
 52 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 souvenirs, French monuments, French tombs, 
 French cookery, French bills of fare, French visit- 
 ing cards, French teaching, French Christian 
 names, French gymnasium suits, French bugles, ex- 
 cite the wrath of the pan-germanists. They would 
 even germanize red skirts and blue skies. They 
 would raise between Alsace and France, her former 
 country, a Chinese wall."* 
 
 In a pamphlet on The Nightmare of Europe^ 
 Doctor Albert Gobat of Berne compared the German 
 Empire to an eagle which, "when threatened by 
 another of its kind, thrusts its claws deeper into 
 the flesh of its victim." "The old policy of the 
 Allemanni in enslaving their conquered foes is re- 
 vived in the nineteenth century. Not slavery in a 
 physical or economic sense, of course, but touching 
 their purest, most intimate and most legitimate feel- 
 ings. Slavery of the body may be more easily 
 borne than constraint of the spirit." 
 
 Yet it is claimed that these measures of defense 
 
 • Preface to Zislln's Bourires W Alsace. 
 t he Oauchemar de VEurope. 
 
 53 
 
iALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 are not "laws of exception," but in fact the or- 
 dinary statutes which prevail throughout northern 
 Germany. The sign, "Strengstens Verboten" 
 "most severely forbidden," is said to occur far more 
 frequently in Prussia than in Alsace. The Prus- 
 sians are used to it. They have grown up under 
 socialistic paternalism until it is accepted as a con- 
 dition of life.* Bethmann-HoUweg has been forced 
 to admit that "one can not make a Prussian out 
 of a South German or an Alsatian." The Alsa- 
 tians rebel at paternal direction. When their let- 
 ter boxes (Boites aux Lettires) became "Post-brief- 
 kasten" they resented the Prussian advice placed 
 on them that "aU letters should be addressed, 
 stamped and put in the box." 
 
 Efforts Toward Conciliation 
 
 As a step toward mutual conciliation the Statt- 
 halter von Wedel issued (August, 1913) a pro- 
 posal of education in substance as follows, calling 
 
 * "Kings, princes, titles, compulsory military service 
 and class distinctions seemed as meet, proper, and natu- 
 ral to us as long ears on a donkey." "A Hyphenated 
 American," in Saturday Evening Post, 1916. 
 
 54 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 on "all well-disposed people of the provinces to 
 join in active union to help the growing youth. 
 The purpose of the organization is the bodily, spir- 
 itual and social soundness of the children of Elsass- 
 Lothringen. It would promote and deepen the love 
 of home and nation. Excluding all political and 
 religious ends, it should provide for nature study, 
 for tours in the country, for physical exercise and 
 healthy games of all sorts, as well as for social and 
 hygienic study and reading of good history." Such 
 measures would tend to broaden the outlook and 
 turn the attention of the Alsatians from past mis- 
 adventures to social and educational progress. 
 
 Alleged Mistakes in Management 
 
 Those who believe in the future of German "Ent- 
 welschung" recognize more or less clearly certain 
 mistakes committed in the past. Some of those in- 
 dicated to me by different persons may be cited. 
 
 Too great leniency has been shown: willingness 
 to compromise in Lorraine with French sympathy, 
 in Alsace with Swiss republicanism. The Statt- 
 65 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 halters Manteuffel, Zeppelin and von Koeller have 
 been especially censured for giving consideration 
 to local opinion.* 
 
 Too great severity has been shown : attempts to 
 teach love of Germany by displaying Germany's 
 
 * "Gennanization by gentle methods, by the prestige 
 and. personal ascendency of a man of high culture and of 
 great nobility of soul (Manteuffel, 1887) had not only 
 proved a failure but was forever discredited in German 
 public opinion. . . . They felt a naive admiration 
 for themselves and believed they had accomplished 
 things of which no other people in the history of the 
 world could boast. . . . The past seemed small, 
 mediocre and despicable. . . . Very soon, in view of 
 their economic development and the pretensions of their 
 World Politics, their ancient and glorious title — a nation 
 of poets and thinkers — sounded almost like an insult to 
 German ears. If the Alsatians failed to acclaim the 
 German Empire as they should have been inclined to do, 
 according to the Germans, it was because they were 
 'terrorized' . . . Since Alsace was terrorized by 
 France, it was necessary for Germany to terrorize her 
 still more." (P. A. Helmer, Alsace under German Rule, 
 pp. 19, 20.) 
 
 "To let a people or still more a fraction of a people 
 decide international questions, for instance, which state 
 shall control them, is as good as making the children of 
 a house vote for their father. It is the most ridiculous 
 fallacy that human wit has ever conceived." (Prof. 
 Lusson, Das KuUurideal und der Krieg; quoted by Re- 
 main Holland, Au-Dessiis de la MSUe.) 
 
 56 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 most unlovely side. For this the military leaders 
 and their Pan-Germanist associates have been un- 
 der criticism. 
 
 We have wrongly held Alsace-Lorraine respon- 
 sible for outhreaks of chauvinism in Paris — a mat- 
 ter in which these provinces had no part. 
 
 It is a mistake in these days to hold conquered 
 territory: and Germany is not fitted for the task 
 of dealing with people not exactly like her own. 
 She has never been willing to try. Germany is 
 avowedly no "melting pot" of races and has no 
 desire to become such. To the policy of taking 
 French territory at all It is said that Bismarck 
 was strongly opposed, and he yielded to von 
 Moltke's insistence on the necessity of retaining 
 Strasburg and Metz, to which, in the military 
 sense, Alsace and Lorraine are but outlying ap- 
 pendages.* 
 
 * Bismarck is quoted as saying: "As you see, we are 
 keeping Metz, but I confess I do not like that part of the 
 arrangement. Strasburg is German in speech and will 
 be so in heart ten years hence. Metz, however, is French 
 and will be a hot-bed of dissatisfaction for a long time 
 to come. The emperor has too many foreigners for sub- 
 
 6T 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 It was a mistake not to make Alsace-Lorrame 
 frankly part of Prussia, thus bringing the terri- 
 tory wholly and directly under Prussian control. 
 This course was followed with other acquisitions 
 — ^the free city of Frankfort-on-the-Main, till then 
 the capital of the Empire, Schleswig-Holstein, 
 Posen, as well as historic Hanover. 
 
 It was a mistake not to make the Emperor him- 
 self Lamdsherr of Alsace-Lorraine. This would 
 perhaps have touched the springs of patriotic feel- 
 ing and brought Alsace-Lorraine into line with 
 Prussia.* 
 
 jects as it is. We have had more than enough trouble 
 with our Poles though they have been benevolently gov- 
 erned, God knows! And we shall have still more with 
 these Lorrainers, who hate us like poison and will have, 
 very likely, to be roughly handled, whereas the good old 
 German Elsasser will be treated with the utmost con- 
 sideration. They will soon like us better than they 
 ever liked the Frenchmen, who were never weary of 
 poking fun at them, gibing at their accent and generally 
 holding them up to ridicule." ( Conversations with Prince 
 Bismarck, collected by Heinrich von Poschlinger, edited 
 by Sidney Whitman, London and New York, 1908, p. 98. 
 The above is quoted from W. Beatty-Kingston.) 
 
 * This possibility has been held over Alsace as a sort 
 of threat. The mayor of Strasburg entered a complaint 
 
 68 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 It was a mistake to unite Lorravne with Alsace. 
 The two districts had scarcely anything in common 
 until they were torn from France. Since that time 
 common experience has given them a common spirit. 
 To unite them has been to transfer to each the 
 complaints of the other. Lorraine, largely French, 
 chiefly rural and altogether Catholic, appears more 
 docile than Alsace. It is said that in Lorraine 
 there are still peasants who shout "Vive I'Emper- 
 eur," supposing that "VEmpereur Guillaume" is 
 the natural successor of Napoleon III. Four hun- 
 dred years ago, 1543, when the kings of France 
 threatened the autonomy of Lorraine, Edmund de 
 Bollay "traced the portrait of his people." Says 
 he: 
 
 "As for the nature of the men, in so much as 
 Lorraine lies between France and Germany, the 
 Lorrainers partake of the nature of both nations. 
 
 of some industrial injustice done to that city. The Em- 
 peror replied (May 13, 1912) : "Listen, up to here you 
 have known only my good side. If this situation lasts 
 we shall suppress your constitution and annex you to 
 Prussia." (Quoted by George Trumbull Ladd.) 
 
 59 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 From France they are courteous, humane, liberal, 
 prompt and agile in war. From Germany they 
 are robust, bold and ready to fight, unflinching 
 and without fear of death. By the two they are 
 joyous and friendly toward one another. So un- 
 der all conditions and with praiseworthy customs, 
 they are singularly devoted to their natural prov- 
 ince and lord. Thus, as one sees in history, there 
 is no nation under the sun more ready to defend 
 and sustain the honor of its natural prince than 
 the nation of Lorraine."* 
 
 The scholarly Abbe Charles Thilmont of Ober- 
 glningen in Lorraine ascribes to his people "the 
 calmness and coolness of the German with the deli- 
 cacy and exquisite sensibility of the French. They 
 are profoundly attached to religion as the last sur- 
 viving interest, but they hate extremes, clericalism 
 as well as sectarianism. Time which softens all 
 things has chaiiged the ferocious scorn of our con- 
 querors and the first aversion of the defeated. The 
 
 • Quoted in the Journal d' Alsace-Lorraine, July 15, 
 1911, 
 
 60 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS *'REICHSLAND" 
 
 bruises were beginning to be- less felt. The Al- 
 satian people have too much practical sense not to 
 know that they can not go on eternally in the pol- 
 itics of sentiment. We finished by recognition of 
 the accomplished fact and the acceptance of a sit- 
 uation we can not change."* 
 
 "We in Lorraine think sometimes with our heads 
 and sometimes with our hearts. With our heads 
 we accept a situation we can not change. But 
 who can read the heart?" It is said that the Lor- 
 rainer is tenacious but undemonstrative — "Le Lor- 
 ram rage h froid" (The Lorrainer rages coldly). 
 
 In Alsace the dominant note is that of democ- 
 racy. The clue to its spirit is found not primarily 
 in its love of France but in its love of liberty, a 
 survival of the old Germanic freedom which is still 
 alive in the South and West, its expression more 
 or less stifled by militarism.f 
 
 The undercurrents of feeling are not likely to 
 
 * Journal d' Alsace-Lorraine, Strasburg, July 15, 1911. 
 
 t Bismarck is quoted as saying: "We have many 
 measures at our disposal. "We Germans are accustomed 
 to govern more benevolently sometimes more awkwardly, 
 
 61 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 appear to the casual visitor in Strasburg and 
 Metz. Since 1871 there has been a large immi- 
 gration to these cities from the rest of Germany, 
 the Vieux Allemands or Immigres of common 
 speech. To-day Metz is about three-fifths Ger- 
 man, while in Strasburg about two-fifths are 
 ImmigrSs and three-fifths Alsatians. The Germans 
 have added greatly to the wealth and importance 
 of the two cities. In Metz especially, large addi- 
 tions have been built up from German capital. 
 "Strasburg, the quaint and busy city on the 111, 
 with its high-pitched roofs and the huge lace-like 
 spire of its red minster, with its cheerful and ap- 
 parently well-satisfied people, seems to have little 
 in common with the tragically draped statue in 
 
 Paris. " 
 
 but in the long run really more benevolently than the 
 French statesmen. We are, moreover, able to grant the 
 inhabitants a far greater degree of individual freedom 
 than the French institutions and traditions ever per- 
 mitted." (Quoted by Edmund von Maoh, What Germany 
 Wants.) 
 
 But Alsace asked no freedom as a "grant," only as an 
 inherent right of free men. And this France, even amid 
 the reactions of the Second Empire, always respected. 
 (D. S. J.) 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 Strasburg is prosperous, its general adminis- 
 tration effective, and business always dreads a 
 change.* Its future seems unquestionably German, 
 Every visible trace of French culture has been sedu- 
 lously stamped out. But "no solution can be im- 
 posed by force." The old question underlies all 
 this seeming peacef ulness, and "the most stiif -necked 
 Prussian official comes at last to realize its exist- 
 ence." Even in Strasburg the Alsatian remains 
 Alsatian. He is a "citizen of no mean city" which 
 must bide its time. The more sympathetic among 
 the Immigres ultimately reach the same point of 
 view. 
 
 Outside of Strasburg and Metz — even in con- 
 siderable towns like Colraar and Miihlhausen — ^the 
 Immigris constitute but a small fraction of the 
 population. So far as "expansion" is concerned, 
 crowded Germany gains nothing by annexation, 
 for the lands of Alsace still belong to the Alsatians. 
 The Germans can not get a foot of ground thert 
 
 * "The government of Germany is feudalism; the 
 government of German cities Is business efiSclency " 
 
 63 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 without buying it. This they could do before 1870, 
 and this they can do in any part of the earth. 
 The germanization of Strasburg and Metz is 
 scarcely more marked than the germanization of 
 manufacturing cities outside of Germany — let us 
 say of Milwaukee or of St. Louis or of Sao Paolo 
 in Brazil. German immigrants, "Hungerpilger" 
 (Pilgrims of Hunger), are crowding into Basle 
 and Zurich, perfectly willing to assume Swiss cit- 
 izenship to escape German militarism and German 
 taxes.* German merchants and manufacturers 
 have "expanded" throughout the world. With the 
 growth of German industries there has come to 
 Metz and to Strasburg, as well as to other Ger- 
 man manufacturing towns, a large accession of un- 
 skilled "cheap labor," much of it temporary, from 
 Poland and Italy. But this, while tending to pre- 
 vent the return of the provinces to France, con- 
 
 *A citizen in Basel said to the writer: "Es sind 
 manche tausend EUdsser in Basel, well sie nicht 
 Deutsche werden wolUen. Es sind noch mehr tausende 
 'Altdeutsche in Basel die fiir Arbeit kommen, auch 
 wollen sie Bchweizer werden." 
 
[ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 tributes nothing whatever to the problem of con- 
 ciliation. 
 
 It was a mistake to try to conciliate the old Al- 
 satian aristocracy. Some of these accepted Impe- 
 rial favor, but the class as a whole repudiated all 
 alliance with their conquerors. Throughout both 
 provinces the old bourgeoisie speak French, read 
 French, think French culture superior to German 
 and regret that such culture is in a degree denied 
 to their children. The blending of races and race 
 interests takes place first at the bottom of the so- 
 cial scale. It was our experience in Miihlhausen 
 to walk into the Bourse and find three hundred men 
 — ^well-to-do Germans to all appearance and with 
 German names — ^transacting their vociferous busi- 
 ness all in French. The use of French in common 
 life is advancing downward in spite of and largely 
 because of official pressure in the other direction. 
 
 It was a mistake that the constitution of 1911 
 was not granted twenty years earlier. This might 
 have given the Alsatians an earlier interest in Im- 
 perial as against local politics. It is said that the 
 
 65 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 government has encouraged the development of a 
 socialist party in Alsace to give a new line of di- 
 vision as against "particularism." The constitu- 
 tion handed down from above has not satisfied the 
 people, and it has again emphasized the fact that 
 the provinces are a "wound in the flank" of a great 
 empire. Moreover, it is in itself contrary to Ger- 
 man legal traditions. If Alsace-Lorraine is 
 "Reichsland," its people are not peons or feudal 
 servitors who go with the land, but are in some 
 degree at least German — "Second-class Germans" 
 ("Deutsche zweiter Klasse") — in the bitter words 
 heard in Alsace. 
 
 It is claimed that more appointive offices should 
 have been filled hy local selection. That there is 
 little local participation in administration is not 
 wholly the fault of the government. In view of 
 the protest of Bordeaux, the "Indigenes" could 
 hardly accept Imperial appointments without the 
 feeling or the accusation of being renegades to their 
 own people. 
 
 It was a mistake not to control the private 
 66 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS *'REICHSLAND" 
 
 schools for girls as well as those for boys. It Is 
 the women of Alsace-Lorraine who, more than the 
 men, keep alive the traditions of France. A busi- 
 ness man may fit his politics to his affairs, a woman 
 never. 
 
 /* was a mistake to bring minor officials from 
 Prussia. It is freely admitted that the German civil 
 service has not been adequate for its duties, being 
 on the whole lacking in foresight, tact and fair- 
 ness. "It was Germany's mistake to send to Elsass- 
 Lothringen North Germans and Protestants, stiff, 
 haughty, totally devoid of tact and sympathetic 
 insight, who behaved like so many little Geslers." 
 While the Ministerium itself has contained many 
 men of high order of scholarship and intelligence, 
 "the lower positions have been largely given to 
 non-commissioned officers used to the harsh disci- 
 pline of the Prussian barracks." Under the Ger- 
 man constitution all officials can say: "Criticize 
 and blame as much as you please; so long as I 
 enjoy the confidence of my superior, I shall not 
 change my course." "So long as the military, 
 61' 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 pietistic, feudal, monarchical element rules in Ger- 
 many, so long will there be no change in its ad- 
 ministrative methods."* "The officials in Strasburg 
 have little social relations with the people. There 
 are enough of them to form a society of themselves 
 and even several cliques of their own." 
 
 The greatest mistake in German management has 
 been its subordination to the military group in 
 Berlin. "The Pan-Germanist League is preparing 
 for war, against the will of the Emperor, whom they 
 
 • Says AlthofC, a German essayist: 
 
 "We Germans are the most learned nation In the 
 world and the best soldiers. We have achieved great 
 things in all the sciences and arts; the greatest philos- 
 ophers, the greatest poets and musicians are German. 
 Of late we have had the foremost places in the natural 
 sciences and in almost all technical spheres, and in addi- 
 tion we have accomplished an enormous industrial de- 
 velopment. How can you wonder that we are political 
 asses? There must be a weak point somewhere." 
 
 This weak point is the lack of long foresight, lack of 
 breadth of outlook, lack of ability to see beforehand tlie 
 final results of an alluring line of policy, above all the 
 inability to put one's self in another's place. The state- 
 ment of Althoff above quoted was used by von Bulow as 
 an argument against allowing manhood suffrage In Prus- 
 sia — "the German people are incapable of self-govern- 
 ment." (D. S.J.) 
 
 68 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 have practically obliterated ( 'armihile' ). Hence 
 the desire to keep hatred alive in Alsace-Lorraine. 
 The Emperor himself seems to be friendly and 
 peace-loving." But his eiforts at conciliation were 
 not always well planned, as for example, in his 
 restoration — in Prussian fashion and at Alsatian 
 expense — of the old castle of Hohkonigsburg in 
 the Vosges, 
 
 The fundamental error, the Alsatians claim, is 
 the failure to grasp the spirit and purpose of Al- 
 sace.* In the words of a professor in the German- 
 ized University of Strasburg : "I do not know these 
 people called 'Nationalists' in Strasburg and Col- 
 mar and MiihUiausen. I have never met any of 
 them; I don't want to meet any of them; I don't 
 know their names; I never read their papers; I 
 
 * "L'une des fautes commises par tes Allemands 8 
 Vegard des Atsaciens-Lorrains, et peutStre ta plus grave, 
 est de n'avoir compris ni leurs regrets ni leurs espoirs. 
 La doctrine pangermaniste repose sur une conception 
 particulidre, et d'ailleurs fausse, de V4volution Jiistorique, 
 et celd, expUque qu'elle demeure, malgr4 les efforts de 
 sociitis puissantes, une pensie des lettres." 
 
 (Martin: La Crise AllemomdeJ) 
 
 69 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 don't see where their Journal d'Alsace-Lorrame 
 gets its subscribers." 
 
 "It is as easy," said an Alsatian to me, "to make 
 the feelings of Alsace understood at Berlin as to 
 inject by osmosis the essence of violet through the 
 skin of a hippopotamus."* 
 
 Traditions of Freedom vn Alsace 
 
 Because Alsace was chiefly German it was 
 thought that she would welcome restoration to the 
 Empire, even though in the humble relation de- 
 finable as that of a tenant on Imperial territory. 
 "The relief of our brothers in chains in France" 
 was part of the alleged motive for the invasion of 
 Alsace.f But the "long-lost brothers," never at 
 
 * "UAllemand est aussi peu habituS d, se mettre dans 
 notre peau Que nous repugnons d, nous mettre dans la 
 sienne." (Marcel Sembat.) 
 
 t In Alsace and Lorraine from, Ccesar to Kaiser, 
 1915, Ruth Putnam condenses the views of Herrmann 
 Derichsweiler (.GescMchte Lothringens, 1901). It ap- 
 pears that "the joy in Germany over the recovery of the 
 lost lands was intense. It was thought that Lorraine 
 would be like an ancient parchment whose original text 
 bad been covered by a new script, but not so much de- 
 
 70 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 any time German in spirit, had grown up in an- 
 other family, and they resented being made pawns 
 in a game of diplomacy. Alsace had no love for 
 any empire. She had held out against Louis XIY 
 
 stroyed that it could not be restored to legibility by a 
 skilful hand. A discerning eye could detect the sub- 
 structure of pristine customs, civilization and moral 
 unity, evidences of a background essentially Germanic, 
 just visible through the obscuring foreign tissue spread 
 over it. But it was found that 'it was the outward 
 form that had remained German, while the soul itself 
 had altered.'" What knew they of Germany? During 
 their absence in France " 'a spring spirit such as the 
 world had never before experienced had breathed over 
 the desolate intellectual wastes, and kissed into life a 
 rich harvest of thought from which the noblest elements 
 of the Ausland (foreign countries) have drawn their 
 nourishment. Under the lead of divinely endowed men, 
 the German nation has been rebuilt on ^a new plan. 
 The man of Alsace or Lorraine knew nothing of our 
 renaissance. So he returned a gallicised stranger to an 
 empire grown strange in its new intellectual splendor. 
 Only a wretched fragment of German speech remained 
 to him, and this fragment was wholly Insufficient for 
 intellectual purposes. The only intellectual life he knew 
 moved to French rhythm.' 
 
 " 'They had not attained the best that France could 
 give her own children and they had lost all German 
 idealism. They were strange hybrids. Their greatest 
 loss was that half mystic feeling for nature, character- 
 istic of young Germany. They did not possess that 
 dreamy ideality' {traumerische IdeaHtaf) ." 
 
 ni 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 as she did against Napoleon. She had compelled 
 Mazarin's assurance that the sole purpose of the 
 French arms in Alsace was to insure the independ- 
 ence of the free cities, with no thought whatever 
 of taking advantage.* 
 
 The traditions of freedom in Alsace go back to 
 the days of her "DScapole" or "Ten Free Cities" 
 of the Holy Roman Empire. Strasburg was then 
 a republic under the direction of a bishop, and 
 the rest of Alsace was controlled by the League of 
 Free Cities formed in 1353, at the suggestion of 
 the Emperor, Charles IV. The League lasted un- 
 broken for more than two hundred years. It com- 
 prised Miihlhausen, Colmar, Tiirckheim, Rosheim, 
 Miinster, Schlettstadt, Hagenau, Weissenburg, 
 Kaysersburg and Oberehnheim. Landau entered 
 the League in 1511, and the largest of its mem- 
 bers, MiihUiausen, left it in 1523 to join the more 
 powerful Confederation of the Cantons of Switzer- 
 
 * "Assurer V independence des villes Wbres itant la 
 seule fin que la France proposait . . . sans avoir 
 pens6e de leur tirer aucun avantage de tout le sang." 
 (Mazarin, to the mayor of Colmar, 1648.) 
 
 72 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 land. In their internal affairs these "free cities" 
 were free from all outside control. Even after the 
 date of 1681, when Louis XIV by the seizure of 
 Strasburg jBnally carried Alsace into the kingdom 
 of France, it was a maxim in politics not to dis- 
 turb affairs; "II tie faut pas toucher les affaires 
 d' Alsace." 
 
 National boundaries had not then acquired the 
 fixity seen in our time. Nations, In the modem 
 sense, did not exist under the feudal system. To 
 belong to the Empire was mainly a matter of pay- 
 ing tribute on the part of cities and princes. The 
 Empire did not defend the free cities against the 
 raids of the "Ecorcheurs" ("flayers"), English sol- 
 diers of fortune who roamed over France in inter- 
 vals between wars. A portion of Alsace was once 
 given in bond to Charles the Bold, of Burgundy, 
 in return for a loan. The loan being paid off by 
 the cities, they then incidentally beheaded the hated 
 Burgundian governor, Peter de Hagenbach. Later 
 Alsace was sold to Spain, but the deal was never 
 consummated. The transfer of the Decapole to 
 
 73 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 France was not therefore a matter which involved 
 the breaking of any intimate ties, for no such bonds 
 ever joined Alsace to the Holy Roman Empire.* 
 And of this empire, which in Voltaire's words was 
 not an empire, was not holy and not Roman, 
 Austria — not Germany — ^was the natural successor. 
 The claim of Germany to sovereignty over Al- 
 sace on account of the racial dialect of the people 
 and on account of former association with an ex- 
 tinct "Holy Roman Empire" is, of course, an ab- 
 surdity. France's claim to domination, in so far 
 as it rests on history, is not much better. In jus- 
 tice and in right the sovereignty of Alsace belongs 
 to the Alsatians, and in ideal conditions it would 
 be for them and for them alone to determine their 
 allegiance. This should be decided without intimi- 
 dation, without duress and without bribery, a state 
 
 * "On the whole it may be said that the emperor'a 
 loss was a shadowy one. The loss was Strassburg's own. 
 She deliberately renounced her freedom for fear of a 
 worse fate if she resisted. ... A piece of territory 
 was not stolen from one monarch to another. Rather 
 was a small business incorporated in a large one." 
 (Ruth Putnam, Alsace and Lorraine, p. 75.) 
 
 74 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS ^'REICHSLAND" 
 
 of affairs hardly to be brought about in the present 
 organization of Europe.* 
 
 Neither France with her mourning figure of 
 Strasburg, as little as possible like an Alsatian 
 maid, nor Germany with her "Ahwehrgesetze," her 
 laws of exception and repression, has ever quite 
 grasped the present spirit of Alsace. Alsace fa- 
 vored France in spite of her Germanic blood, be- 
 cause she found in France friendly toleration and 
 friendly lucidity of expression. 
 
 The noble statue at Belfort, the chief city of 
 that part of Alsace still remaining in France, is 
 full of suggestion. It is called "Quand Meme" 
 ("Nevertheless"). It represents not a classical fig- 
 ure like the statue at Paris but a real Alsatian girl, 
 two broad bows of black ribbon on her head, sup- 
 porting a dying French soldier and ready to grasp 
 
 *"Ldrdessus VAllemand iclate de rire and quand 
 I'Allemand commence A rire cela dure en g6n6ral trds 
 longtemps. Yous pouvez, disormais, lui purler artitrage, 
 rigime du droit, paciflsme, II vous repondra 'Ja! Confer- 
 ence J Majorit4! Plus lesoin de se tattre! Ja! Compter 
 les voixl M€me risultat.' " (Marcel Sembat.) 
 
 75 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 his musket as he falls. Alsace loved France be- 
 cause she had learned to know her literature, and 
 because France treated her as an equal and left 
 her to control her own internal aifairs herself. Al- 
 sace is discontented with Germany because Ger- 
 many does not grant her equality and takes away 
 her freedom. Her real affinity lies with Switzer- 
 land.* In these matters language and race have 
 no permanent significance. Said Napoleon's gen- 
 eral, Foy: "If ever the love of all that is great 
 and generous grows faint in the hearts of the 
 people of old France, it will be necessary only for 
 them to pass the Vosges into Alsace to recover their 
 patriotism and their energy." 
 
 "It is notorious," said Count Schmettau, aide 
 to Frederick the Great, "that Alsace is more French 
 than the Parisians." {"Plus franfais que les 
 parisiens") 
 
 "Alsatians are more Gallic than the Gauls, be- 
 cause, being Germans, they can be more obstinately 
 
 * "Pour tin Suisse un compatriote de langue diffirente 
 est plus Cher qu'un stranger de la mime langue." (Al- 
 bert Oeri, Basle.) 
 
 76 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS ''REICHSLAND" 
 
 French than the French themselves. They would 
 leave a wound that would long be a menace to Eu- 
 rope." (Morier.) Once a general complained to 
 Napoleon that his Alsatian soldiers spoke a Ger- 
 manic jargon. "What matter?" said the Emperor. 
 "They speak in German, but they saber in French." 
 (WetterM.) 
 
 In Prussia the theory has been current for some 
 time that France is decadent and corrupt,* to be 
 despised by the earnest student. Modern culture 
 and modern science are products of German genius. 
 But Alsace rejects this assertion. She looks upon 
 the romantic veneration of the German for ancient 
 forms as a kind of atavism, a return toward bar- 
 barism. The final evidence of the failure of the 
 Prussian regime is its futility. It gets nowhere, 
 
 * General von Puttkammer, the governor who fol- 
 lowed Baron Manteuffel, thus states this view in the 
 pan-Germanist Strasiiirger Post: "The diminution of 
 natality in France is the cause of the formation of the 
 'foreign legion.' It results from the physical degeneracy 
 which dates from the time of Napoleon, who drained the 
 blood of the youth of France on the fields of battle." 
 In this vein the Berliner Post "regards it as a doubtful 
 pleasure to fight a nation so decadent" 
 
 77 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 not a step has been permanently taken, and if the 
 bitterness of feeling has abated (1913) that is the 
 work of time, not of "Entwehchung." No form 
 of vote or plebiscite could settle the relations of 
 Alsace-Lorraine, for the provinces would choose 
 freedom with Germany "rather than bureaucracy 
 with France." 
 
 French influences in Alsace-Lorraine scout the 
 idea of a plebiscite on the score of democracy. 
 Democratic principles would be violated in any 
 plebiscite even if a fair popular vote could be ob- 
 tained without intimidation, bribery or duress. The 
 large accessions of immigrants to Strasburg and 
 Metz from "Old Germany" should not, it is claimed, 
 be allowed a vote in determining the future of Al- 
 sace. The Declaration and Protest of 1871 ex- 
 pressed the will of the provinces for all time. 
 
 Alsace wants freedom for development. If one 
 asks an Alsatian whether he would be French or 
 German, one rarely gets a direct answer. This 
 reserve is not due to prudence. The question seems 
 to him to miss the point. Preference for France 
 78 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 or Germany is not the important thing. Freedom 
 they want. Business interests unite Alsace closely 
 vrith Baden and Bavaria. The most enlightened 
 Alsatians earnestly hope that Germany will become 
 more and more liberal along with the extension of 
 democratic ideas, and that internal sympathy will 
 modify the policy of "Blood and Iron." "We are 
 between two fires" ("entre deux feux"), the re- 
 proaches of sympathizers in France and the petty 
 aggravations of Prussian officials. "We must learn 
 to think with our heads, not with our hearts ! Our 
 hearts call to France ; our heads tell us that we find 
 our future with Germany."* 
 
 * "I recall this singular heart-cry uttered by all the 
 journals in your (Prussian) pay: 'France fears us no 
 longer.' As if to maintain the balance of power in 
 Europe, France should be afraid of Germany! 
 
 "All the misunderstanding comes from this. You 
 imagined dully that France since 1870 had been afraid. 
 . . . You are convinced that the aim of aims in politics 
 for a nation is to inspire fear in its neighbors. 
 
 "But my poor pan-Germanist, the other nations are 
 not afraid. They are running on even keel. That is all. 
 It is you who are afraid. You know why without daring 
 to avow it. You are afraid because you know, like all 
 the world, that property wrongly acquired 'profits never.' 
 
 79 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 "The force of arms will eternally decide our fate. 
 We are destined to be the plaything and the vic- 
 tim of aU hates and of all wars. Never shall we 
 be sincerely consulted. Never shall we be asked 
 our desires with any intention that they should be 
 granted."* 
 
 The Nationalists m Upper Alsace 
 
 Consequently there has arisen in Alsace, espe- 
 cially in Colmar and Miihlhausen, a group or party 
 called "Particularist" or "Nationalist," loosely or- 
 ganized, but working in various ways toward the 
 freedom of the province. These people resent the 
 idea of political tutelage; it is as repugnant to 
 them as the cognate one that they are mere ap- 
 pendages to the fortresses of Strasburg and Metz. 
 
 For it is recognized that the question of Alsace- 
 Lorraine is mainly the question of Alsace; this 
 
 You are retarded by your ideas." (Froelich, Le Patir 
 Germaniste en Alsace.) 
 
 * "Les armes dicideront A toute 4t4rniti de notre 
 sort. Nous sommes distinis d 6tre le jeu et les victimes 
 de toutes les rancunes et de toutes les guerres. Jamais 
 on ne nous consultera sinc6rement. Jamais on ne nous 
 demandera nos disirs avec la volont6 d'y acc6der." 
 
 80 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS "REICHSLAND" 
 
 again is a question of industrial Strasburg on the 
 one hand and of Ober-Elsass (Colmar and Miihl- 
 hausen) on the other. The fate of Lorraine is a 
 secondary matter. This fact is reahzed in France. 
 The lost provinces are symbolized always by the 
 Alsatian maid, never by one of Lorraine. The 
 French people mourn for Strasburg rather than 
 for Metz. "Metz, a provincial town, stood for 
 nothing vital. Strasburg, on the Rhine frontier, 
 stood for that half-assimilated Teutonic element, 
 an essential part of modern French culture." "For 
 Strasburg enjoyed for centuries a unique privilege 
 that the best friends of France and Germany would 
 be glad to see restored." 
 
IV 
 
 THE FEENCH POINT OF VIEW* 
 
 There Is a Question of Alsace-Lorraine 
 
 WE may now look at the case from the 
 French point of view. 
 "There is a question of Alsace-Lorraine." It is 
 a German question, but it concerns France and the 
 whole world as well. It can be settled only by 
 granting to the people equal rights within or with- 
 out the Empire. The responsibility for failure 
 rests with the Pan-Germanist war faction which 
 dominates Prussia and which through Prussia rules 
 
 Germany, 
 
 Attitude of Alsace 
 
 The present attitude of the majority of the 
 
 people of Alsace (July, 1913) is concisely summed 
 
 up in these three lines of current doggerel: 
 
 * The reader must continually keep in mind the fact 
 that these studies were made in 1913, a year before the 
 beginning of the war. 
 
 82 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 "Franfais ne peux, 
 Prussien ne veux, 
 Alsacien suis," 
 
 "Frenchman I can't he, 
 Prussian I won't he, 
 Alsatian I am." 
 
 The present hope of the provinces thus centers 
 in Home Rule within the Empire. "Time will not 
 heal our wounds, for the cause is not an event, but 
 a condition." Apparently to the Alsatians (1913) 
 but one final result is possible — Elsass-Lothringen 
 must be a self -governed state within the German 
 Confederation. She will continue to cultivate the 
 friendships which bind her to France. Her people 
 will become increasingly bilingual and cosmopol- 
 itan in their sympathies. She must furnish her 
 part of the cement which should bind Continental 
 Europe into one system of good-will. This is the 
 dream of the future, the hope of those who see a 
 free Germany arising from her subservience to 
 armored patriotism and military conscription. The 
 theory of "Reichsland" or conquered territory may 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 be good Imperial law, but it is not good politics 
 and it is not good policy. Neither is it good law, 
 for it is brigandage — ^the law of force and intimi- 
 dation, not of right and order. "France might 
 assign to Germany her sovereignty over Alsace; 
 she could never sign away the rights of the peo- 
 ple."* 
 
 Of going back to France there is now (1913) 
 no question. To be recovered by war is a process 
 inconceivably hideous. f Otherwise it is outside the 
 domain of possibility. In words already quoted, 
 *'It would be a pitiable politician and a sorry 
 strategist who would begin putting the national 
 house in order for the great emergency by 
 abandoning 'Die Wacht am Rhevn.' " That "the 
 
 * Le droit de la guerre nous ne connaissons pas. Mais 
 il est vrai et cegi ne depend pas d, nous ni de nos vo- 
 lontds, ni de nos adhesions, il est vrai qu'Aprds un temps 
 le fait 'brutal devient le fait accompli." (Sembat.) 
 "Kein Kaiser kann was unser ist verscJienlcen." 
 
 (Schiller.) 
 
 t "Niemand in Elsass-Lothringen wiinscht einen 
 Krieg zwecks Wiedereinigung mit Frankreich," This 
 statement has almost become a proverb. A Lorrainer 
 asks, "Is it true? Who can probe the heart?" 
 
 84 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 great emergency"* is itself a nightmare evoked 
 by military preparedness does not change the prob- 
 lem. Most of the commerce of Alsace must nec- 
 essarily be with Germany. Home Rule and au- 
 tonomy within the German Empire might be more 
 generally acceptable than to return as three minor 
 departments in highly centralized France.f Po- 
 litical relations with France, it is generally agreed, 
 are practically impossible. In so far, German of- 
 ficialism is right. The question of Alsace-Lorraine 
 is Germany's affair and for it no direct or imme- 
 diate solution is possible. This is the essence of it, 
 — "Can Germany give her acquired province a free- 
 dom her own citizens have not yet achieved for 
 
 themselves?" 
 
 Alsace a "Buffer" State 
 
 There are some few who hope to see the neutral- 
 ization of Alsace-Lorraine, forming a "buffer" 
 state, an independent, unfortified republic connect- 
 
 * See page 31. 
 
 t Before the cession to Germany, Alsace-Lorraine con- 
 stituted three departments in France — Haut-Rhin, Bas- 
 Rhin, Moselle, with also parts of Meurthe. 
 
 85 
 
[ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 ing two similar states, Belgium and Luxembourg, 
 with the repubUc of Switzerland. Such procedure 
 would separate France from Germany by a neutral 
 belt, distinct from both, protected by both, sym- 
 pathetic with both. Even now, as in the days of 
 Voltaire and Frederick the Great, there is nothing 
 mutually exclusive in French and German culture. 
 
 It has been suggested that to give freedom to 
 Alsace, France might offer in exchange Madagas- 
 car or the French Congo. But this project again 
 is to all appearances outside the realm of practical 
 politics. "Only a St. Louis can restore a con- 
 quest." To give up territory won by force would 
 be, say Germans, to dishonor the graves of Worth, 
 of Gravelotte and of Mars-la-Tour. To free Al- 
 sace would be to confess the fundamental error of 
 the policy of "blood and Iron." 
 
 There is no value in the suggestion to restore 
 Lorraine to France, still leaving Alsace left in Ger- 
 many. "Alsace is dearer to the heart of France 
 than Lorraine could ever be." No one in Alsace 
 or Lorraine wants to see the united provinces now 
 86 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 dismembered in any way. Once bound together in 
 bonds of common misfortune, their ties have be- 
 come very strong and close. German Lorraine, 
 torn from Nancy and from France, now shares the 
 Alsatian spirit, and the future of Alsace will de- 
 termine her fate as well. The suggestion that the 
 French-speaking communes in both districts be re- 
 turned to France has no merit whatever. This 
 would simply weaken Alsace-Lorraine, without in 
 any way helping to settle the problems at issue. 
 It would be a form of dismemberment. The feel- 
 ing of a people in no way depends on the dialect 
 they speak at home. The solution of the question 
 lies entirely outside all matters of race or lan- 
 guage. It turns wholly on the relation of Alsace- 
 Lorraine to the Empire. Moreover, Metz, the chief 
 town of Lorraine, is now more German than French. 
 The old city is, of course, almost wholly French, 
 but a new manufacturing center, wealthier and more 
 populous, has been built by German capital about 
 its railway station. In Germany I have heard it 
 suggested that Alsace-Lorraine might be added to 
 
 87 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 Baden, but this idea meets with no favor in the 
 provinces. Further, no solution of the problem can 
 be reached by dividing the provinces either length- 
 wise from north to south, or crosswise from east 
 to west. There are "German-minded" ("Deutsch- 
 gesinnt") people in almost every commune, but 
 there is no German-minded district. 
 
 Home Rule in Alsace-Lorraine 
 
 As to the details of Home Rule, public opinion 
 diverges widely. In some degree the question be- 
 comes one of religion. I have tried in this paper 
 to avoid all discussion of those phases of the prob- 
 lem which are entangled in German politics. The 
 "Centrist," or clerical groups,* of Alsace as of 
 Germany, in general uphold the Prussian adminis- 
 tration or "Right" as against the "Left" — radicals 
 and socialists. Alsace and Lorraine are essentially 
 Catholic districts. But Catholic opinion divides, 
 as does other opinion, according to the individual 
 
 * Representatives of ecclesiastlcism both Lutheran 
 and Catholic. 
 
 88 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 feeling and conscience. Some of the most noted 
 of the leaders of Nationalism are honored as abbes 
 by the Church. Other church leaders are equally 
 devoted to the cause of Germanism. The attitude 
 of Clericalism has vigorous opponents within the 
 clergy in spite of the tendency to fall in line with 
 constituted authority. With these few words we 
 may leave the matter of Centrism otherwise un- 
 touched. 
 
 But it is probably true that the Catholics as a 
 whole would prefer a monarchy to a republic. They 
 look forward to a condition like that of the Grand 
 Duchy of Baden, the "model grand duchy," which 
 lies parallel to Alsace on the other side of the 
 Rhine. 
 
 It would not be easy, however, to supply the 
 provinces with a grand duke or a prince by pro- 
 motion or by importation. "We can not make a 
 new dynasty in the twentieth century." The 
 princely families which swarm in middle Germany 
 are relics of the feudal system. If progressive 
 Germany were free from the element of hereditary 
 
 89 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 rule, it would never take It up. It has accepted 
 the dynastic right of the King of Prussia, who, 
 under the circumstances, must also be Emperor. 
 But only as a matter of historic succession are 
 dukes, archdukes and bishops accepted by the Em- 
 peror as his august colleagues and subordinates. 
 The selection of some Catholic prince as Landesherr 
 would be acceptable to Lorraine, but probably not 
 to Alsace. "Alsace is strong in the faith, but like- 
 wise prone to heresies, at times displaying a mysti- 
 cism more profound than orthodox."* From Cath- 
 olic sources the author heard suggested as possible 
 incumbents two Protestant princes of the North, 
 Prince August-Wilhelm and Prince Oscar, both of 
 whom have studied at the University of Strasburg 
 and who are, therefore, in touch with Alsatian as- 
 pirations. 
 
 But to Alsace generally the word "autonomy" 
 means the organization of a republic within the 
 
 Empire. The leaders point to the free cities — 
 * "Alsace, une terre de profonde foi, fut 4galement 
 fertile en h4r4sies. Elle a parfois une mystidsme plus 
 profonde Qu' orthodoxe." 
 
 90 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 Hamburg, Bremen, Liibeck — as models in this re- 
 gard. Yet these cities were historically free, join- 
 ing the Empire on their own terms. To create a 
 new rural republic within the Empire seems to con- 
 servative Germany a dangerous experiment. More- 
 over if Alsace were a monarchy even, she would 
 make herself a republican one, quite unlike the 
 kingdom of Prussia in which aristocracy and plu- 
 tocracy under the terms of the constitution must 
 perpetually rule. 
 
 In Lorraine, and to a considerable extent in Al- 
 sace, the public schools are under clerical control, 
 and many Catholics think it better to hold what 
 they have than to struggle for an impossible free- 
 dom which from the point of view of the Church 
 grows more and more undesirable. There is a Cath- 
 olic element in France which favors war — any war 
 — as a step toward the doivnfall of the republic. 
 In this attitude they may be logical, for war in 
 a republic might be followed by the restoration of 
 monarchy. 
 
 91 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 Democracy and, Militarism Incompatible 
 
 As Marcel Sembat has convincingly shown, 
 (Faites un Roi Sinon Faites la Paix, 1912), 
 the republic of France is near the parting of the 
 ways.* Democracy can not permanently exist 
 amid the "Anarchy of Armament." The frame- 
 work of successful war demands arbitrary rule, 
 secret agreements, secret intrigues, and the subor- 
 dination of civil progress to the interests of militar- 
 ization. Hence, Sembat argues, the differences with 
 Germany must be somehow adjusted if the Repub- 
 lic is to endure. It has been militarized against 
 its will and in response to outside efforts at in- 
 timidation. If war becomes a nation's chief busi- 
 ness it must provide itself with a king, with all 
 the attributes of instantaneous decision and of mar- 
 tial law. If France is to remain free, its first need 
 is to make friends with her neighbors and with them 
 to develop the instruments for peaceful adjustment 
 
 * The Pan-Germanist movement and the failure of 
 diplomacy left France no choice and Sembat is himself 
 a member of the present war cabinet of France (1915). 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 of international diiFerence, with the disposition to 
 avoid needless quarrels. Says Sembat: "If we 
 would keep out of the fire, let us refrain from ask- 
 ing Germany for what she can not give us. She can 
 not give us Alsace-Lorraine, not even a little slice 
 of it. She can not exchange it in whole or in part 
 against colonies, not even all our colonies. She 
 can not give us even their neutrality. I do not 
 even believe, and I have reason, that she will con- 
 sent to discuss their autonomy as a condition pre- 
 liminary to an agreement (Franco-German) of 
 which this is the natural and certain end. Let us 
 not demand the impossible : this wisdom will permit 
 us to obtain everything possible. If we despise war- 
 like enthusiasms it is because we know another en- 
 thusiasm and another war which seems to us superior 
 and from whose heights we view with compassion 
 this old soldierly enthusiasm which we have known 
 and surmounted. . . . War demands a King: 
 the Republic demands Peace.* 
 
 * "La guerre exige un roi I La Ripublique exlge la 
 Paixt" 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 Among the French peasantry of Lorraine one 
 hears little of the broader politics, which most of 
 them regard as of minor importance. Life goes 
 on easily, quietly, humbly, just as it slips by in 
 the French villages beyond Mars-la-Tour. No one 
 reads German papers. A few read the French jour- 
 nals in Metz, but world-politics lies far away. A 
 chief complaint in rural Lorraine is that taxes are 
 too high and that they are growing higher. The 
 view of the German peasant seems not to be very 
 different from this. It is not in the country com- 
 munes, French or German, that the problems of 
 self-government are pressing. 
 
 The situation of Alsace-Lorraine seems in the 
 long run hopeful for the cause of freedom. Ob- 
 stacles vanish as men arise to remove them. Alsace 
 and Lorraine both have the task to keep alive their 
 local identity, their traditions of culture, their eco- 
 nomic prosperity. They must lead in any move- 
 ments which tend toward the reconciliation of 
 Prance and Germany. They must lend no encour- 
 94 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 agement to Chauvinist or Pan-Germanist. The 
 peace society lately formed at Muhlhausen, the 
 Franco-German League in Paris, the "Friedens- 
 freunde"* in South Germany all have many adher- 
 ents in both nations. Alsace-Lorraine should aid 
 in the liberal movements of Germany. Some day 
 the influence of Alsace may turn the scale in behalf 
 of German freedom.f Some day Germany will 
 point the way forward from Bismarck and von 
 Moltke to the ideals of Schiller, Heine and Kant. 
 "When that time comeS, this great nation, the sec- 
 ond Fatherland of every cultured man, shall stand 
 for honor and justice, and the prophecy of Heine 
 shall come true. Not only Alsace-Lorraine, but the 
 whole world in this ideal sense shall be German."| 
 
 * "Friends of Peace"; in 1913 a large and influential 
 organization holding annual congresses. 
 
 t "Give now to Alsace-Lorraine the liberty and the 
 dignity of a German state. I am convinced that Alsace- 
 Lorraine is ready to accept it and even that she wishes 
 it and asks it of us. . . . Then peace is possible, or 
 the King and Revenge!" (Marcel Sembat: Faites un 
 Boi, Sinon Faites la Paix.) 
 
 t Albert L. GuSrard, in a personal letter, 1913. 
 
 95 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 War No Solution 
 
 The following statements, quoted from leading 
 Alsatians, are typical of the attitude of a great 
 majority of them: 
 
 "War is the worst possible solution of our prob- 
 lems, because war is no solution. With war there 
 is never a solution of any question. Alsace has 
 been part of Germany, of Austria, of France, and 
 now of Germany again. If France should gain 
 Alsace by war, it would be only the beginning 
 of another war, and so on without end. Our hope 
 Is in the change of feeling in Germany, the growth 
 of a free-minded party ( 'freisinnige Partei' ) , and 
 in the rising demand for local rights and local 
 freedom among the German people in the place of 
 concentrated paternalism." 
 
 "Some Alsatians think that our purposes may be 
 best attained by continuous local agitation as a 
 means of educating Germany. Most of us think 
 a quiet patience better. Agitation only makes It 
 harder to come to mutual understanding." "We 
 96 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 have grown up under a regime more democratic 
 than Germany — especially Prussia — has ever 
 known. We should do our best to be good citizens 
 of Alsace, and this will have its weight in Germany, 
 for the German people, outside the military group, 
 are men like ourselves." "We have a 'manage de 
 raison' with Germany ; let us make the best of it." 
 "Children will always regret their mother, but they 
 need not hate their stepmother." 
 
 "Every solution implying war is to be rejected. 
 No definite solution could result from a Franco- 
 German war, by which Alsace would find herself 
 cut into two parts, each to destroy the other. A 
 war, whatever its result, provokes always the de- 
 sire of revenge and leads to indefinite international 
 disorder, in which the antagonism among different 
 elements would be greatly intensified. Other ques- 
 tions of high importance are rising to the surface 
 (social, moral, educational questions) demanding 
 solution; for all these questions, implying higher 
 ideals than the cheap quarrels between nations, is 
 demanded the collaboration of all men of good- 
 97 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 will, who should ignore all national frontiers. It 
 is inadmissible that the question of Alsace-Lorraine 
 should indefinitely hold back the general develop- 
 ment of Europe. A Franco-German entente would 
 necessitate for Alsace-Lorraine a government ac- 
 cording to its own will. It would thus destroy the 
 worst obstacle to the pacification of Europe and 
 open to civilization new lines of progress. 
 
 "This solution which, in assuring peace to the 
 world, would guarantee the development of Alsace 
 and Lorraine, would nevertheless offend two power- 
 ful influences — ^the self-conceit of two nations and 
 the interest of the war system. It is for the peo- 
 ple of these provinces to say loudly and clearly 
 that the demand be made the friendly bridge be- 
 tween two civilizations, not the glacis of a fort 
 nor yet the field of battle. This is the meaning of 
 the meetings at Miihlhausen, and the vote of the 
 Landtag: 'No War;* Franco-German reconcilia- 
 tion, and Autonomy for Alsace-Lorraine !' " 
 
 • In all Alsace I found but two persons who claimed 
 that the ultimate solution, was to be found in war. 
 
 98 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 Solution Through Franco-German Entente 
 
 The feeling of the intelligent and conservative 
 republicans in Alsace may be summed up in the 
 following paragraphs : 
 
 The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871 was 
 a capital fault which has influenced in an unfor- 
 tunate manner all the evolution of Europe and 
 particularly that of France and Germany for the 
 last forty years. The arguments given by the 
 Germans at present to justify this annexation (the 
 German language spoken in Alsace, the recapture 
 of territories once belonging to the Empire) will 
 not bear examination. It is incontestable that in 
 1871, in spite of the Germanic dialects spoken in 
 , Alsace, in spite of questions of race, although the 
 land once belonged to the Holy Roman Empire of 
 the German nation (to which the Empire of Aus- 
 tria was the successor rather than the new German 
 Empire) yet the sentiment in all classes of the 
 population was almost without exception in favor 
 of French rule. 
 
 m 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 France was at that time the Fatherland for every 
 Alsatian and for every Lorrainer as for all other 
 Frenchmen. The proof is given in the devotion 
 with which the people of Alsace and Lorraine alike 
 fought against Germany, as well as by the state- 
 ments at the national assembly at Bordeaux (the 
 protest of the deputies of the lands annexed) as 
 well as at the first German Reichstag. The an- 
 nexation to the German Empire, then, took place 
 contrary to the wish almost unanimous of the peo- 
 ple of Alsace-Lorraine, and without that population 
 having been in any way consulted. On the contrary 
 they showed by every means in their power how 
 repugnant this annexation was to them. 
 
 In 1871 the sole title of Germany to the pos- 
 session of Alsace-Lorraine was the so-called "right 
 of conquest." There is a singular persistence in 
 certain quarters of this spirit of mind. To give 
 but a single example, this very year the general 
 (von Deimling) commanding the army corps at 
 Strasburg spoke of Alsace-Lorraine as "imsere 
 Eroberungen" (our conquests). 
 100 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 It appears from an impartial examination of 
 history that the war of 1870-71 was desired by 
 the military party of each of the two countries 
 and that if France had been victorious she would 
 have annexed German territory. It appears as if 
 the two parties had arranged the "right of con- 
 quest," as a writer of the time has said, in some 
 fashion as the "rule of the game." 
 
 In the first year after the war, during the delay 
 of "option" for French nationality (until October, 
 1872), and still later, there was a considerable 
 exodus of families and of individuals desiring to 
 hold French citizenship. The principal reason for 
 this exodus was the desire not to do military serv- 
 ice in Germany, as Germany after 1872 obliged 
 all the young men born French to bear arms. 
 
 One of the principal reasons which impelled them 
 to escape military service was the idea that a war 
 of revanche was imminent and that as German sol- 
 diers they would be forced to fight against the 
 French and against their own relatives. As a re- 
 sult many families find themselves part German, 
 101 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 part French and part Swiss, being at the same time 
 Alsatian in spirit. 
 
 The administration of the first years after the 
 war was almost entirely in the hands of the "im- 
 migrants." The people of Alsace-Lorraine hated 
 to serve the new government. Functionaries came 
 from all parts of Germany, but especially from the 
 North, where the character of the people is very 
 different. They neither knew the land nor the 
 population, and for the most part they were badly 
 chosen. There was thus formed in the provinces 
 two different elements, the first composed of na- 
 tives remaining in the country, the other of immi- 
 grant Germans. The latter class comprised almost 
 all the ofiicials. During forty years these elements 
 have existed side by side with but small degree of 
 fusion, notwithstanding the efforts made at times 
 for conciliation. 
 
 Since 1871 there have been notable changes in 
 the situation. The generation of natives born since 
 the war has ceased to consider France as its na- 
 tive land, having no direct communication with that 
 102 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 country and no longer taking part in its life. In 
 place of sentiment for France and in spite of the 
 protest of 1871, there has grown up a movement 
 for autonomy, looking forward to an Alsace-Lor- 
 raine enjoying political rights equal to those of 
 the German states, not in theory alone (for the 
 constitution of the Empire seems to give the same 
 rights as to other citizens) but in practise. This 
 autonomy should offer the people of Alsace-Lor- 
 raine the opportunity to develop themselves along 
 the lines traced by their character and history, and 
 on an equality not alone of law, but of fact, with 
 other Germans. 
 
 On the other hand, the sons of the immigrant 
 German officials, born largely in the country, have, 
 come more or less into the Alsatian way of think- 
 ing, and the character of these functionaries has 
 correspondingly improved. The doubtful elements 
 of the earlier years have been in part gradually 
 eliminated. But the fusion is still far from com- 
 plete. Antagonism persists between North Ger- 
 mans and South Germans. With the latter, Alsace 
 103 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 especially has many ideas in common. The hos- 
 tility is constantly aggravated by the chauvinistic 
 journals of both parties who find in it their rea- 
 son for existence and by certain military elements 
 who understand no role save that of conquerors. 
 
 The solution of the question of Alsace-Lorraine 
 must rest in the fusion of the diiferent interests 
 so that both interests and traditions shall be safe- 
 guarded. A Franco-German understanding seems" 
 the necessary preliminary to this solution. 
 
 A preliminary to this understanding and not a 
 consequence, because Germany will never allow her 
 treatment of Alsace-Lorraine to depend on any 
 international entente, and such entente is not nec- 
 essary, for with an international understanding, 
 the question of Alsace-Lorraine would lose its 
 sharpness. The native population, sure that no 
 war with France would take place, would have less 
 repugnance to the military service. They would 
 run no risk of fighting a nation with which they 
 had profound sympathies. The elements of French 
 104 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 culture ingrained in Alsace and especially in the 
 French part of annexed Lorraine would cease to 
 be antipathetic and would strive to become assimi- 
 lated. Economic relations already exist demanding 
 the maintenance of commercial union with other 
 parts of the Empire. These would be redoubled 
 under normal social relations, which would then be 
 possible not only with the immigrants but with 
 Germany in general. 
 
 In fact, no element of the population would fear 
 menace from any other, and friendship for France 
 grown up through family relations could freely 
 manifest itself without the slightest hostility to 
 Germany or to her government. This is not the 
 case to-day when any sign of friendliness toward 
 France is considered in certain quarters as enmity 
 toward Germany. 
 
 If the opposition between France and Germany 
 existed no longer, Germany would have no reason 
 to fear hostile acts nor to refuse the freedom nec- 
 essary to the development of Alsace-Lorraine. 
 105 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 Moreover, the province is to-day perfectly capable 
 of repressing' any disorder among the different ele- 
 ments inhabiting her territories. 
 
 Every military solution is to be rejected. No 
 definite solution could result from Franco-German 
 war, in which Alsace-Lorraine would be torn into 
 two parts, each destroying the other. A war, what- 
 ever its result, would provoke the desire of revenge. 
 It would result in an international malady of in- 
 definite duration, with the antagonism among the 
 various elements more and more exasperated. 
 Meanwhile many questions rise to the horizon, ques- 
 tions social, moral, educational, which demand so- 
 lution. For all these problems which require a 
 higher ideal than that of petty international quar- 
 rels there is needed cooperation of all men of good 
 will. 
 
 It is not admissible that the question of Alsace- 
 Lorraine should retard indefinitely the general de- 
 velopment of Europe. The Franco-German under- 
 standing, with the granting to Alsace-Lorraine a 
 government responding to its wishes, would remove 
 106 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 the worst obstacle to the general pacification of 
 Europe and would open to civilization new lines of 
 progress. 
 
 "This solution which, in assuring the peace of 
 the world, would guarantee the development of the 
 two provinces, would unfortunately offend the van- 
 ity of both countries as well as give displeasure 
 to powerful interests. It is for the people of Al- 
 sace-Lorraine to demand it loudly and clearly. 
 They may thus come to form the bridge between 
 two nations instead of being a fortress and a bat- 
 tlefield. NO WAR, A FRANCO-GERMAN UN- 
 DERSTANDING AND AUTONOMY FOR AL- 
 SACE-LORRAINE."* 
 
 * In Alsace-Lorraine in 1913 there were many German 
 immigrants, men of education, largely in business or in 
 scientific pursuits, who were in full sympathy with the 
 point Of view here set forth. 
 
NATIONALISM 
 
 The Nationalists in Alsace 
 
 THERE are some who are not satisfied with the 
 slow progress of political evolution. Such men 
 are found in Strasburg and Metz as well as in 
 Miihlhausen and Colmar. This party group 
 of "nationalists" claim that agitation also edu- 
 cates, and they have used the forces of journalism 
 and of cartoons, of merry raillery and of biting sar- 
 casm in the interest of the autonomous republic. 
 Says Jules Froelich in Le Pangermaniste en Al- 
 sace: "Pan-germanism Is the exotic which ruins 
 the color of Alsace." "It is evident that the only 
 obstacle to the definite Germanlzatlon of Alsace is 
 the Pan-germanist alone, the odious Pan-germanist 
 under all his disguises, the Pan-germanist journal- 
 108 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 ist,* the Pan-germanist functionary, the Pan-ger- 
 manist magnate, the Pan-germanist pedagogue, 
 the Pan-germanist ecclesiastic, the Pan-germanist 
 pohceman, the Pan-germanist higher oflScer, the 
 Pan-germanist subaltern, the Pan-germanist indus- 
 trialist, the Pan-germanist trader. There is also 
 the feminine Pan-germanist, and we have to call on 
 all the vestiges of gallantry remaining to us from 
 French times to induce us not to speak of her. 
 That is all to her profit. When the last Pan-ger- 
 manist shall be put under the sod, on that very day 
 Alsace will find herself germanized as if by en- 
 chantment and with the best grace in the world.f 
 On that same day we shall have seen, sure as the 
 dawn arises, the United States of Europe to whicK 
 the Pan-germcmists constitute the sole obstacle, the 
 
 *A German journalist in Alsace-Lorraine reminded 
 me that "tliere is also a question of bread and butter" 
 (."une question de pain et ieurre") which most editorial 
 writers have to consider. 
 
 t "Alors te jour oH Ze dernier pangermaniste sera 
 enfin rentr4 sous terre, ce-jour-lA, VAlsace se trouvera 
 germanis6e comme par enchantement et de la premiire 
 grace du monde." 
 
 109 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 day when international fraternity between states 
 will efface them or leave them to retain only a con- 
 ventional and administrative significance." 
 
 Among the more active republicans in the prov- 
 inces are L^on Boll of the Journal d'Alsace-Lor- 
 ravne at Strasburg, the Abb^ E. Wetterld, editor 
 of La Nouvelliste at Colmar, Doctor Blumenthal, 
 mayor of the town, Marie Schmitt, editor of Le 
 Messm at Metz, and the inimitable artist, Jean 
 Jacques Waltz of Colmar, known as "Oncle Hansi" 
 ("Uncle Johnny") and as "Professor Knautschke." 
 "Oncle Hansi" published some years ago a charm- 
 ing Histoire d' Alsace for the children of Alsace and 
 of France, "those who do not forget." The illus- 
 trations of Alsatian people and Alsatian history 
 were gracefully drawn, but neither text nor pictures 
 were flattering to the Prussians. The sale of the 
 work was forbidden in Germany, but joyously pro- 
 moted in Belfort and Nancy. In 1913 its author 
 was crowned by the French Academy at Paris.* 
 
 •Another book by Hansi In 1913, Mon Tillage, In 
 which French sympathies were avowedly shown and 
 Prussian officials were keenly satirized, led to the au- 
 
 110 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 At one time Abbe Wetterle, well known as an 
 
 orator, delivered in France a lecture in the French 
 
 language on the question of Alsace.* This ad- 
 
 thor's arrest and trial at Leipzig for high treason. This 
 was changed later to a charge of exciting dissension, of 
 which Waltz was convicted and sentenced to a year's 
 imprisonment in Danzig. Being released on bail, he 
 escaped to France with the assistance or connivance of 
 his friends. 
 
 •AbhS WetterlS's address, deliverfed at Havre, Ev- 
 reux, Rouen and Tours, closes with the following words: 
 
 "The day of recrimination is past. We are already on 
 the way to use an imperfect instrument to try to obtain 
 more and better. . . . 
 
 "One can not be constantly heroic. Placed between 
 the menace of brutal repression and the bait of un- 
 merited recompenses the feebleness of certain characters 
 appears. . . . 
 
 "Germany has not thus far known how to show her- 
 self generous. At the three extremities of her territory, 
 oppressed nationalities trouble her internal peace. Ger- 
 manism wishes to level everything. This results only in 
 provoking sudden checks in the work of assimilation. 
 ... As for us who are desirous of maintaining our 
 old reputation as 'tStes carries,' nothing shall turn us 
 from our line of conduct. Thanks to our organized re- 
 sistance, we may already consider the day of great per- 
 secutions terminated. . . . Our laws of exception are 
 still numerous, but slowly we' have worn away their 
 angles. Our cause is good. It will triumph unless the 
 effort is made useless by tragic events which no one can 
 foresee and which we should be criminally selfish to 
 desire." 
 
 Ill 
 
ALSACE-LORRAINE 
 
 dress, printed under the title of Le Sentiment Popu- 
 laire en Alsace-Lorraine, was moderate in tone, but 
 for delivering it the lecturer was sent to prison for 
 two months. A cartoon by "Oncle Hansi" shows 
 the little priest looking out from behind the prison 
 bars, with below him the inscription, "Lieb Vater- 
 land mag ruhig sein."* 
 
 In a Miihlhausen weekly paper, Dur's Elsass, 
 printed in Alsatian dialect, Henri Zislin has pub- 
 lished a series of remarkable cartoons. One of these, 
 drawn at the beginning of the Balkan War, rep- 
 resents Austria as the Ogre ("Kindlifresser") 
 watching with smacking lips the play of three chil- 
 dren — Bulgaria, Serbia and Albania. Dame Ger- 
 many advises her not to bite, "I ate two such once 
 and I found them very bad for the digestion." 
 Under the title of Sourires d' Alsace ("Alsatian 
 Smiles") a volume of these cartoons from Dur's 
 Elsass has been published with an introduction 
 
 * A line from the national hymn, "Die Wacht am 
 Rhein," "Dear Fatherland may rest in peace." 
 
 112 
 
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 by Paul D^roulMe. The book gives a vivid in- 
 sight into the feelings of the aggressive Alsatian 
 nationalists. In the sketch, "Deux Opinions" an 
 Alsatian on the heights of the Vosges says to his 
 son: "Do not forget, my boy, that it is the work 
 and sweat of our fathers which has fertilized this 
 soil, and by the iron of the plow they have won 
 it. This land belongs indeed to us." Opposite, 
 a Prussian addresses his son : "Forget not, my boy, 
 that it is by blood, iron and fire that our fathers 
 conquered this land. It is therefore ours and will 
 remain so." 
 
 The point of view of the active nationalists has 
 been summed up as follows : 
 
 "Whether our aim is possible in our lifetime or 
 not, that is not our concern. It is our right, and 
 so it becomes our duty as free men to speak. A 
 lesson of our history is this. We have endured 
 the Huns, the Vandals and the Pandours, and Al- 
 sace is still Alsace. Let us hope for better days, 
 my children; for the future, do not forget, be- 
 113 
 
ALSACErLORRAINE . 
 
 longs to the good God and not to the uglj fellow 
 who presides over the Pan-germanist League."* 
 
 Three Duties of Alsace 
 
 "Our duties in Alsace," says a deputy from 
 Muhlhausen, a German by origin, "are plainly these 
 three: 
 
 *'To avert war, first and foremost. 
 
 "'To use every effort toward the liberalizing of 
 public opinion among our compatriots in Germany. 
 
 "To cease irritating agitation for what we know 
 we can not get. Agitation heats the blood and 
 makes for enmity, not friendship." 
 
 * "Non pas au vilain bonhomme qui prMde sur la 
 Ugue pangermaniste." 
 
 THE END