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Readers are asked to re- port all cases of books marked or mutilated. < Do not deface books by marks and writing. r.r. r.«- P2!I!i" University Library DD 801.A52B17 1918 ^iMfi^Ji^iV...,?.t, A'sace & Lorraine 3 1924 028 376 311 Compliments OF THE Author Philadelphia THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE Cornell University Library The original of this bool< is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028376311 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE THOMAS WILLING BALCH L. H, D. Trinity College, Hartford Member of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston SECOND EDITION ALLEN, LANE AND SCOTT Philadelphia 1918 A,3KH(3o Copyright, 1918 by THOMAS WILLING BALCH A PAUL SABATIER DE STRASBOURG ET DES CEVENNES NOTE. Concerning the statements about the origin of the name of Metz on pages 27, 33 and 35, the author regrets he did not cite in a foot-note the following authorities which he had consulted: The Encyclopcedia Britannica, eleventh edition 191 1, Volume XVIII., pages 307-308 : "Metz, the Roman Divodurum, was the chief town of the Mediomatrici and was also called by the Romans Mediomatrica, a name from which the present form has been derived by contraction." Nouveau Larousse Illustre, puhlie sous la direc- tion de Claude Auge, Paris, Volume VI., page 68: L'origine de Metz est extremement ancienne. La Divodurum gauloise fut tres prosp^re sous la domination romaine, comme capitale de la Civitas Mediomatricum. Avec les invasions barbares, elle s'appela Mettis." INTRODUCTORY NOTE. THE present essay is the result of some per- sonal observations which it was my good for- tune to be able to make in the years 1890, 1891, 1894, 1896 and 1897, in Alsace and Lorraine on both sides of the Franco-German frontier estab- lished in 1 87 1 by the treaty of Frankfurt. I have also studied the question of Alsace and Lorraine and its history off and on ever since. In preparing this essay, I have consulted the following works: Dr. William Smith: Ancient Atlas, London, 1874. Thomas Willing Balch: Some Facts about Alsace and Lorraine, Bulletin of the Geographical Club of Philadelphia, 1895. Dr. Julius Peterson: Das Deutschtum in Elsass- Lothringen, Munich, 1902. Ernest Lavisse: Histoire de France — volume five; La lutte contre la maison d'Autriche. La France sous Henri II. {1515-1559), by Henri Lemonnier, Paris, 1904; volume seven; Louis XIV. La Fronde. Le Roi. Colbert (1643-1685), by E. Lavisse, Paris, 1906. Rodolphe Reuss: La France et r Alsace a travers VHistoire, Paris, 4th August, 1915. Leon Dominian: The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe, New York, 19 17. P. Vidal de la Blache: La France de I'Est (Lor- raine-Alsace), Paris, 1 91 7. Henri Welschinger: Frederic de Dietrich, maire de Strasbourg {1748-17Q3), Revue des Deux-Mondes, Paris, September 15th, 191 8. I have made free use of my paper mentioned above, which I read before the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, January 2nd, 1895. T. W. B. Philadelphia, November i8th, 1918. THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. I. The question of Alsace and Lorraine was born on May loth, 1871, at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, by the signing in that city of the treaty of peace which ended the Franco-Prussian war, and cut off from France and handed over to the German Empire most of Alsace and part of Lorraine. From that day that question was an active reality for France and the annexed lands. And though the newly constituted German Empire repeatedly denied through various channels that such a question existed, the question of Alsace and Lorraine like- wise became from that same tenth of May a most active and ever present reality for Germany. Very soon it became also an actuality, though not recog- nized openly, for the other nations of Europe. Both France and Germany silently looked about them at all times for alliances to prepare for the day when — as the deputies of Lorraine and Alsace had solemnly and prophetically declared on Feb- ruary the 17th, 1 87 1, in the National Assembly of 2 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. France at Bordeaux — ^the storm of war must inevi- tably be let loose again if any part of either Alsace or Lorraine were taken against the wishes of their inhabitants from France and annexed to Germany. The main cause of the crushing armaments that came to weigh year by year upon all Europe more and more oppressingly, it is not too much to say, was the annexation almost half a century ago of these lands against the will of their inhabitants. Certainly that annexation was one of the chief factors that brought upon practically the whole world the Great War which has injured and still threatens our present period of civilization. THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. II. My interest in Alsace and Lorraine was awak- ened at an early age. When a boy I heard my elders often speak of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, and the consequences that flowed from those events. My interest in the lost provinces of France grew until I hoped to visit them some day and so learn on the spot some- thing more about those lands and their peoples. At length in October, 1890, the same year I graduated at Harvard College, it was my good fortune to visit as a tourist both Alsace and Lor- raine. Before I entered those lands, I had formed certain rather definite and clear cut opinions about them. I thought that they were two provinces that were inhabited by peoples of the German race and tongue whom France in past centuries had through violence and treachery seized from the Germanic Empire. I had heard that the people of those two provinces, though speaking German themselves, had opposed in 1871 their annexation to Germany. I had learned also that the Germans in annexing Alsace and Lorraine to the newly formed German Empire, claimed that they were merely recovering 4 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. their long lost German brothers and sisters — ^who had been violently torn from their Fatherland. And I had found that the German theory was well expressed in one of the German war songs, The German Fatherland. The essential words of that song, which were written in 1813 by Ernest Moritz Amdt, when the Germans were driving Napoleon out of Germany, and were afterwards set to music in 1825 by Gustav Reichardt, were: "Was ist das Deutschen Vaterland? So nenne endlich mir das land! So weit die Deutsche Zunge klingt! Und Gott in Himmel Lieder singt! Dass soil es sein, dass soil es sein. Das ganze Deutschland soil es sein." "What is the German Fatherland? So name to me at last that land! So far as the German tongue rings And hymns to God in heaven sings! That shall it be! The whole of Germany shall it be!" Entering Alsace from Bale in Switzerland, I was not surprised at first at what I heard and saw. At the stations and in the railroad car I heard THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 5 German; everywhere I saw German names and German signs. Passing through Mulhouse, I caught sight of the Alsacian name of KoechHn so well known in France. At Mulhouse a number of people got into the car, and three or four of them, a German soldier among the number, exchanged remarks in German about the weather, the state of the crops, and other such every day topics. However, after a time the conversation lapsed. Then one of the men who had gotten in at Mulhouse, who had taken part in the conversa- tion in German, and who sat directly opposite the soldier, to whom he had addressed some of his remarks, ptilled out of his pocket a copy of Le Petit Journal of Paris, one of the most widely read newspapers in France. Here, then, was a man to all appearances a German, who spoke to his fellow-passengers in German, read- ing a newspaper published on the other side of the Vosges Mountains. Upon arriving at Col- mar, all these travellers who had entered the car at Miilhouse got out and a new set took their place. The newcomers were four — a father, a mother, a girl of about sixteen and a small child of three or four. They appeared, like all the others, to be Germans. The three older mem- 6 THE QUESTION Of ALSACE AND LORRAINE. bers spoke to one another in German, but when- ever they addressed a word to the Kttle child, they always spoke in French. It seemed that as they knew two languages, they wished, like sen- sible people, to teach them both to their children. But when the conductor put in his head at the window and asked in German for their tickets, they at once spoke to him in French, and made him answer them in the same language. At the railroad station in Strasbourg, aU the employes were busy talking German. There was a poor woman at a news-stand reading to her small boy out of a book. A German officer asked her in German for a copy of the Kolnischer Zeitung. She answered him in the same language, and sold him the paper. She had, however, also on her table a large pile of Le Petit Journal of Paris. But what was more interesting and eloquent of her nationalistic thoughts and feelings, was that as she opened her book she began to read to her young son in French. That was a school house conducted evidently to teach French to the rising genera- tion, a school house which all the edicts of the German Empire had not been able to put out of business. The cab driver, too, who drove me to the Paris- OLD HOUSE, STRASBOURG THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. / erhof or Hotel de Paris, took pains to speak in French rather than German, so as to make it quite clear on which side were his sympathies. At the hotel the employes were all Germans by birth, immigrants from beyond the Rhine. They spoke German and were most anxious to emphasize their nationality. ,. 1^/ Walking about the town the next day, I saw on every side signs with German names, such as Bethmann, Hartmann, Holzmann and Schneider. But in countless ways it was easy to see that at heart the Strasbourgers were French. For in- stance, in the window of a grocery store on the Broglieplatz (Place de Broglie) named after a marshal of France, although all display of the French flag was rigorously forbidden in the Reichs- land, the store-keeper, whose name was thoroughly German, had circumvented the ban on the tri- color by placing in a conspicuous place some huge white candles, between two packages of red ones, wrapped at the bottom in blue paper. It was indeed a dull man who did not see at once the blue, white and red of the flag of France. ) Not only the people themselves by their racial features, names and various other intangible things were stamped all over as belonging to the German 8 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. race, but also the visible result of their labors in the past as expressed in their buildings, showed that they belonged to the Teutonic branch of the German family. For example, the old or medi- aeval houses of Strasbourg are marked all over as belonging to the style of construction that is found in the lands of Germanic origin; not merely all through the present German Empire, but also in the German speaking lands of the Hapsburg pos- sessions, as well as in Belgian Flanders and the Dutch provinces. Likewise the mediaeval walls and towers that remain in Strasbourg are essentially of the kind that you find in German and not in French speaking lands. The Germanic charac- teristic of the people was shown in addition in the most notable building of Strasbourg, its famous minster. The cathedral of Strasbourg, which rises in the middle of the old city, shows strong marks of Germanic features in its construction. While built in part in the German Romanesque style, it has many Gothic features in its makeup. But it is not the Gothic of the lie de France, on the contrary in the main it belongs to the group of churches which are found upon the upper German Rhine, as at Speyer and Worms. "Thus this great edifice. THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 9 distinctly a German building," the present writer has elsewhere written/ "in its lines and decorations, dating from 1179 to 1439, is additional evidence to prove that the Alsacians are of German origin. From the top of the cathedral tower you have a far-reaching view. All along the west you see rtmning north and south the blue slopes of the Vosges Mountains, which divide the country off from France; and parallel to them, but a little to the east of Strasbourg, that great artery of com- merce, the River Rhine, which commercially links Alsace with Germany. Between the mountains and the river lies the plain of Alsace. Beyond the Rhine far to the east, lies the Black Forest. Looking out from the steeple over the city, the writer (1890) was struck with its resemblance to Niirnberg, as the city of Albrecht Diirer appears from the tower of the castle where the ancestors of the HohenzoUems used to hold their sway. The color of the roofs, the style of construction of the houses of old Strasbourg, were almost identical with those of the city of the Meistersingers. ^fMy guide, as he pointed out to me the objects of inter- est, spoke in German, and, like every one I had ^ Some Facts about Alsace and Lorraine, a paper read before the Geographical Club of Philadelphia, January 2nd, 1895. 10 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. seen, he looked German. By and by, when I could not quite understand something he was explaining, he said: "Perhaps you can under- stand French better?" "Yes," I answered. That was the end of German. He at once rattled away in French. I asked him whether he was a German or a Frenchman. "I am an Alsacian," he answered. But as he was describing the bombard- ment of Strasbourg and pointing out where the German batteries stood, and telling how bravely the French commander General Uhrich resisted, just after saying the Germans were many tens of thousand strong, he unconsciously disclosed his national feelings by the expression, "But we, militia, police and all were but seventeen thousand."^ He then told me how only German was taught in the schools, and how many of the well-to-do French had left for France." Among the montmients of Strasbourg, perhaps the one most dear to the Alsacians is that of General Kleber on the Kleberplatz or Place Kleber. A native of Strasbourg and a general of the First French Republic, the name of General Kleber who was killed in Egypt, where he succeeded to the command of the French army after the return of General Bonaparte to France, is essentially a GENERAL KLgSER, STRASBOURG THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 1 1 German name. It means literally "paster," for zu kleben means to paste, as for example to paste paper on a wall. Another of the best generals of the First Republic who bore a German name and whom France like- wise owed to Strasbourg, was Frangois Christophe de Kellermann, who was born at Strasbourg in 1735. In command of the French army, in September, 1792, Kellermann, by the victory of Valmy which he won in the passes of the Argonne over the enemies of France who had gained possession of the two French fortresses of Longwy and Verdun, effectually put a stop to the invasion of France. For this notable service to France he was made a marshal and subsequently he was created by Napoleon Duke of Valmy. Kellerman in his day and generation struck as heavy and effective a blow at the Germans advancing into France, as Foch struck on the Germans advancing into France in the World War. Another of the famous Strasbourg monuments is that of the inventor of printing from movable type, Gutenberg. He lived in Strasbourg for a time and it was there he began the invention of printing. He holds in his hand an open bible upon which is written in French "et la lumifere fut," 12 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. "and there was light." The statue is by David d' Angers and was unveiled in 1842. Still another of the notable historic monuments of Strasbourg is the tomb of Marshal Saxe. It is in the Evangelical Church of Saint Thomas and is considered the chef d'oeuvre of the French sculptor, Jean Baptiste Pigalle. Maurice of Saxe, a natural son of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, also chosen King of Poland, and the beautiful Countess Aurora von Konigsmark, was born at Goslar, October 28th, 1696. Created a marshal of France and naturalized a Frenchman, he won for France the battles of Fontenoy, 1745, Rocroi, 1746, and Lawfeldt or Val, 1747. In 1748 he captured Maestricht. He is here represented as descending into the tomb which Death opens for him. The figure of a woman representing the spirit of France in vain tries to stop him, and Hercules mournfully watches the marshal. The allegorical figures, such as the Austrian eagle, the Dutch lion and the English leopard, with their flags broken under them, represent the countries whose armies Maurice of Saxe had beaten in the wars in Flanders. There is nothing in the church that can rival it, and perhaps in part for that reason, it has impressed many people as being finer THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 13 than anything in Westminster Abbey which is filled to overflowing. The most important of the open spaces in the old city of Strasbourg, the Broglieplatz or Place de Broglie, is named after a marshal of France of a noble French family originally from Italy, which has given many notable men to France. Another of its members, the Prince Claude Victor de Broglie came to America in 1782, and among other places visited Philadelphia and Boston. After the Franco-Prussian war was over, the Germans built about Strasbourg strong outlying forts far out from the city, some of them in the Grand Duchy of Baden on the German side of the Rhine. They also did many things to add to the importance and commercial and intellectual advancement of Strasbourg to reconcile the inhabi- tants of the ancient freier Reichstadt to their new allegiance. Thus for instance, they built fine new bridges over the River 111, laid out in the unbuilt quarters about the town handsome streets, built an imperial palace and rehabilitated on an import- ant scale the ancient University. Yet in 1890 there were no visible signs to show that the Alsa- cians of Strasbourg were in the least reconciled to their forced annexation nineteen years before to 14 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. the German Empire. Probably one reason for this attachment by a German people, who still spoke German as their daily household tongue, to France by whom they had been forcibly annexed in the seventeenth century, was the great commercial freedom with which Alsace as well as every other province of France was blessed when the French Revolution broke down the barriers to commerce between province and province that had come down from feudal times. In that way the people of Alsace were free to trade with the people of all the rest of France to the remotest parts unhamp- ered with vexatious and prohibitive internal customs duties. Also with the French Revolution there came to the Alsacians the boon of individual freedom in a degree not even dreamt of before. As a unit the Alsacians rallied to the Republic, and after the Napoleonic epic they did their part for France. The strong feeling of attachment of the Alsacians for France is shown in a song composed since the Franco-Prussian War in pure Alsacian German. It is eloquent of the feelings of the native born Alsacians tinder the rule of the Hohenzollems : "Edles Frankreich, deine Grenzen, Dich, seh' ich von fern schon stehn, Wann wird sich mein Schicksal andem, Dass ich Frankreich wieder seh!" THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 15 "Noble France, thy frontier Which I see from far away, When will my lot change. That I may see France again." Or again, in these French lines by Erckmann- Chatrian, likewise written since the war of 1870-71, the absolute preference of the Alsacians for France is also clearly expressed: "Dis-moi quel est ton pays: Est-ce la France ou I'AUemagne? C'est un pays de plaine et de montagne, Que les vieux Gaulois ont conquis Deux mille ans avant Charlemagne, Et que r Stranger nous a pris! C'est la vieille terre frangaise De Kleber, de la Marseillaise!" "Tell me which is your country: Is it France or Germany? It is a land of plains and mountains. Which the ancient Gauls conquered Two thousand years before Charlemagne, And that the stranger took from us! It is the ancient French land Of Kleber, of the Marseillaise!" 16 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. (in 1890 there was no apparent sign to show that the Alsacians were in the least reconciled to their annexation to Germany. To see a people speaking among themselves the language of their fathers and yet bitterly opposing by all the means in their power the attempt to join them once more with that nation of whom geographically and ethnologically they naturally formed a part, seemed very strange. ^ THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 17 III. Leaving Strasbourg for Metz, I travelled by- railroad across the Vosges Mountains by the Col de Saverne (Zabem) into Lorraine. Outside of the lands of the snow mountains I have seldom taken a more beautiftd railroad ride. The moimtains were not high, but the autiunn coloring of the forests was charming and the works of man were in keeping with the beauties of nature. Now and then there were the ruins of a feudal castle on some commanding hilltop. Part of the time, the railroad passed close to a canal that connected the Rhine with the Mame. In that land, where you cotild almost smell in the air the preparations for war, man was not unmindful of the economic laws of nature that govern the rainfall and the depths of the streams. Not only were the forest cut and replanted according to the most scientific knowledge, but also along the roadsides and the banks of the canal trees were growing, thereby affording shelter to both man and beast against the summer sun. Soon after crossing the Col de Saverne the train passed by the station at which a branch road runs 18 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. to Phalsbourg (Pfalzburg), the town made so famous by Erckmann-Chatrian's stories of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic epic. Le Consent de i8ij, l' Invasion, Waterloo, VHistoire d'un Paysan, VAmi Fritz, etc., are stories that every boy or girl who have known French in their youth, have read. Emile Erckmann was bom in 1822 at Phalsbourg, only a few kilometers within the boundaries of Lorraine, while Alexandre Cha- trian was bom in 1826 at Abreschwiller in Lower Alsace. That union of two authors, one with a German and the other with a French name, was a hint of the difference between the two provinces. For as the train moved out from the Vosges Moun- tains towards Sarrebourg and the plain of Lorraine, there was a complete change in the appearance of the people. Whereas in Alsace the people seemed to all appearances to be Germans, in the plain of Lorraine they were unquestionably French in type, and in the villages through which the train passed, the German names had given place to French ones. This difference of race in the two provinces is well exemplified in the costumes of the women of the two lands. The dominant color values of the Alsacian costume run into the darker hues, and it is dominated with the large black bow, so well THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 19 known the world over. It all harmonizes with the peasant costume of other parts of Germany. The costume worn by the peasant women of Lorraine is altogether dififerent in its conception and is easily recognized as belonging to the group of French peasant costumes, and not to those of Germany. The work upon the costiune of Lorraine calls for a lighter hand in its execution than that of Alsace, which is in keeping with the French character. The cap or head-dress of the costtime of Lorraine is white, and not black as that of Alsace. Two places in Lorraine have an especial historic interest for us Americans, which is not generally appreciated. It was at Saint-Di6 in eastern Lorraine at tjie foot of the western slopes of the Vosges Mountains that America was christened. In 1507 the famous cartographer, Martin Waldseemuller, long since in the employ of Duke Ren6 Deux of Lorraine, pub- lished at Saint- Die a little introduction to cos- mography. To this work he added a Latin version of the four letters of Amerigo Vespucci, which were translated from a French version. Waldsee- miiller, however, made a curious mistake. He exaggerated a statement of Amerigo in his letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici. Amerigo 20 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. said in regard to the discovery of probably South Georgia, in 52 degrees south latitude, that he had "measured the fourth part of the globe." Amerigo also said that the lands which they — ^that is the Portuguese expedition of which he was a member — had recently visited and discovered were really a new world or continent. But WaldseemuUer assvuned that Amerigo meant that he had dis- covered the fourth continent. And so Waldsee- miiller in his treatise suggested that to the new world might appropriately be given the name of the Florentine navigator in its feminine form, to cor- respond with the names of Europa, Asia and Africa. Accordingly WaldseemuUer, upon his large map of the new world that accompanied his little treatise, placed the name America. And thus this con- tinent of ours which first surely was discovered from Europe by our Norse ancestors, then prob- ably secondly by the Portuguese at least forty years and more before Columbus sighted land in this half of the world, has ever since borne the name of America, and its inhabitants that of Americans. It was at Metz that in 1777 the Marquis de la Fayette, then a young officer of nineteen serving in the garrison of the town, first heard of the revolt of the American colonies against their motherland; THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 21 and then and there, in his chivalrous young soul, decided that he would brave the perils of an Atlan- tic crossing to offer his sword to our fathers in their struggle for political independence from Great Britain. At the railroad station at Metz in 1890 the employes were German. But as soon as you crossed the old fortifications built by Vauban (1633-1707), a marshal of France, and de Cormon- taigne (c. 1695-1752) the great military engineers of the wars of Louis Quatorze and the Duke of Marlborough, and Louis Quinze and Marshal Saxe, you heard French on all sides, saw French men and women, and saw French names, such as Antoine, Boitier, Merlin and Picard. The houses, too, looked very different, both in their lines and coloring, from those of Strasbourg. Also unlike Strasbourg, the names of the streets were posted up in both German and French. For instance, you read " Konigsplatz " and immediately under it you saw "Place Royale." So, too, with all official announcements. On the right hand you read the word "Notiz" with the text underneath in the old Gothic characters typical of German speaking lands, while alongside there was an "Avis," with the text below in French in the Latin lettering. 22 THE QUESTION OF ALSACfi AND LOftRAINE. It was hardly worth while to ask the reason for this lavish use of French; it was easy to see that while a German race inhabited Strasbourg, a French people lived in Metz. At the hotels, too — the Grand Hotel and the Grand Hotel de Metz — ^you noticed a great difference from the Pariserhof of Strasbourg. The proprietors at Metz were Latins, not Teutons, and with the exception of the waiters in the dining room, the employes were French. The cathedral of Metz is very different in its lines and conception from the cathedral of Stras- bourg. While this church is not so fine as the churches in the He de France, as the cathedrals of Amiens,' Reims, Chartres, and Paris, and also the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, to cite only the very best examples of Ogival art, nevertheless the cathedral of Metz is distinctly French in construction. And it is infinitely finer than the more widely known German cathedral of Cologne. It was begun in the thirteenth century under the influence of the Reims school. The work of building progressed at inter- vals, notably in 1214, 1383, 1478 and 1497. The church was finally inaugurated in 1546. The work belongs entirely to the Gothic or Ogival style of architecture. You notice the windows are not merely holes made in the walls. On the contrary, THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 23 according to the principles of the French architects, the walls are turned at right angles to the church. And flying buttresses are much relied on to uphold the upper portions of the structure, though not to the same extent that they are used in some of the best examples of Gothic work in the He de France. In that way as much light as possible is let into the building. In that respect this church is vastly different in conception from the cathedral of Strasbourg, which, though flying buttresses are used there in limited numbers, is planned in part on the principle of the Romanesque churches. In the Romanesque buildings the windows are holes made in the walls of the church. Then look at the flhhe of Metz. You never saw such a construc- tion as that outside of the radius of the French architects. That in itself shows that a Frenchman planned this church and that workmen of the French race built it. When I was in Metz in 1890, I climbed to the top of the fliche. Three hundred and eighty-seven feet high, it affords a fine view over the city and le pays Messin. On the way up the narrow wind- ing stairs, I fortunately met no one. The man I found at the top was marked all over as a French- man. When I spoke to him in French he replied 24 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. readily in French and pointed out to me the points of interest in the fertile pays Messin. On the hills around the city were the strong forts, the most important being that on the Mont Saint Quentin, towards the west. Then looking out to a greater distance from the city, he pointed out the three battlefields of August, 1870, which resulted in the blocking up of Marshal Bazaine's army in Metz. To the east was the battlefield of August 14th, Colombey-Borny. Then looking west he pointed out Mars-la-Tour, on the French side of the frontier, and the chaussee de Gravelotte, on the German side of the boundary. At those two places the most im- portant parts of two of the great battles near Metz were fought on August i6th and i8th respectively. It was at Gravelotte that the Prussian guard was badly cut up by the French, losing more than three thousand men. Then, towards the northeast, he showed me Saint Privat, where part of the third of the great battles around Metz was fought on August 18th. While at Saint Privat, Marshal Bazaine held his ground, nevertheless the Germans were the real victors, for they prevented him from drawing off the bulk of his army, the flower of the regular army of France, towards Verdun, to the westward. From that time the doom of that army of 170,000 men THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 25 was sealed, as it was soon besieged by the Germans and finally in October forced to surrender. What a difference in the story of Metz in 1870 and that of Verdun in 1916 and 191 7! Then, towards the south, I saw Pont-a-Mousson, on the Moselle in France, in the direction of the ancient capital of Lorraine, Nancy. When I suggested to my guide that he was in truth a Frenchman, for we had not spoken a word of any other language, he main- tained stoutly, "Non, je suis Alsacien-Lorrain." (No, I am an Alsacian-Lorrainer.) Which was a diplomatic way to say that he was not a German but he would like to be French. When I told him that I was an American, he said: "Ah, yes, we are idiots in this part of the world; we fight while you Americans get our money." As I looked out on the pays Messin, and saw in the distance the chauss^e of Gravelotte, where the Germans had paid a heavy price to hold the French in check, I remembered the famous telegram that Punch said King William of Prussia sent after that fight to Queen Augusta : "By the will of Heaven, my dear Augusta, We've had another awful buster; Ten thousand Frenchmen sent below; Praise God from whom all blessings flow." 26 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. When I visited Metz again in June, 1896, on my way from France to Tyrol, a fair managed by Germans was in full swing in the town. And it was noticeable how sharply the line of social contact between the two races was drawn. For while there were plenty of young soldiers off duty who were riding in the merry-go-rounds, or shooting at the various marks in the shooting galleries and otherwise enjoying themselves with the numerous cheap attractions that were provided, and over which a few pretty German girls helped to pre- side, the French girls, dressed in sombre black, flocked severely by themselves, unattended by any young man and carefully avoiding participating in the attractive features offered by the German fair. Doubtless these daughters of France — vierges d' Alsace they have been called — one and all would instantly, quietly but effectually have resented the least friendly advances of the soldiers of the Kaiser. The attachment of these young women for France was silently but none the less eloquently proclaimed so that he who ran could see that their hearts beat loyally for France. From the top of the fleche of the cathedral of Metz you can readily see how the town developed. It is built on the Moselle where there ■ are some THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 27 islands in that stream. Those islands in the be- ginning were an admirable place to settle on as the arms of the river that encircled them formed natural boulevards against attack. At the same time, owing to the islands in the mid- dle, it was easier to cross the river at that point than where its flow was gathered in one unbroken current. After the Roman conquest of all the Gauls there was where Metz now is a town which the Romans called Divodurum. The peoples of the surrounding country the Romans called Mediomatricii, from which the modem name of the town of Metz is almost certainly derived. After the town of Metz had overflowed to the right bank of the Moselle, that quarter became gradually the most important portion of the city. Metz became the important commercial center for le pays Messin about it. Walls were built around it. Of the mediaeval walls la Porte d'Allemagne, built in 1445, still stands. It is built in the same style of architec- ture that you may still see, fortunately, in the feudal castle of Pierrefonds, and which until the spring of 1917 could be seen in the ruins of the greatest feudal stronghold that was ever built, Coucy-le-Chateau. That gate helped to withstand 28 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. the unsuccessful siege of Metz by the Emperor Charles the Fifth in 1552. In Metz there are statues, some on foot, others on horseback, erected in memory of a number of famous men who are linked more or less closely with the history of the town. On the Place d'Armes, there is a statue of Marshal Fabert, one of the children of Metz, where he was bom in 1599. He served in the wars of Louis Treize and Louis Quatorze, and died in 1662. Surely it is not necessary to insist on the fact that his name is not German. Besides Fabert, Metz counts among her children another well known French soldier. It was at Metz that was born Frangois Etienne de Keller- mann, second Duke of Valmy. A worthy son of his more famous sire who won the battle of Valmy over the Prussians, the son was one of the best cavalry leaders of Napoleon. By his brilliant cav- alry charge at Marengo, General Kellermann helped very much to regain the battle which had been all but lost to the Austrians. He also distin- guished himself at Austerlitz and other battle fields. Though the name of Kellermann is German, at Metz were born also Adam Philippe Comte de Custine, who commanded in America under THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 29 Rochambeau the infantry regiment of Saintonge, General Lasalle, the Hellenic scholar Foes, the composer of operas Ambroise Thomas, the engraver Sebastien LeClerc, and the historical painter Jean Leprince. The names of all these other Messins, like that of Fabert, are French, not German. Another Frenchman, whose name is inseparably connected with the town of Metz, is that of Mon- seigneur Dupont des Loges. Catholic Bishop of Metz when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, he continued to fill that important place until his death toward the close of the nineteenth century. With infinite tact and farsighted common sense, after Metz had been annexed along with a third of the ancient province of Lorraine to Germany, Dupont des Loges, whom no flattery nor intimida- tion of any kind could influence, was a leader and a tower of strength to his people in the enforced political bondage which they had to endure. And when in 1874 the people of the annexed lands were given their flrst opportunity to send repre- sentatives to the Imperial Reichstag, Monseigneur Dupont des Loges was sent to Berlin as the practically unanimous choice of Metz and the surrounding district to join with the other fourteen deputies chosen by the annexed provinces, includ- 30 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. ing the Alsacian Protestant Mayor of Strasbourg, M. Lauth, to declare in the hall of the German Imperial Parliament and so to the German people and all the rest of the world besides, that three years after the close of the war of 1870-71, the people of the annexed provinces were still as firmly opposed to the new German nationality which victorious Germany had forced upon them against their will as they had been in the hour of defeat. In the history of Metz the name of Dupont des Loges is assured of a high and hon- ored place. On the Esplanade the French erected a statue of Marshal Ney, "the bravest of the brave," the most famous of Napoleon's marshals. He was born in 1769 at Sarrelouis, a town in the portion of northern Lorraine which was annexed to Prussia by the treaty of peace of 181 5. His statue is by Petre. Soon after the Franco-Prussian war was over the Germans set on the Esplanade an equestrian statue of Emperor William the First. And at another spot in the same park they likewise erected a statue on foot of Prince Frederick Charles, the Red Prince, who took an active part as a com- mander in the operations which in August, 1870, THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 31 bottled up Metz, Marshal Bazaine and one hun- dred and seventy thousand of the French regular army. The environs of Metz are interesting. It is sur- rounded by a number of high hills on which there are strong forts. You were allowed in 1890 and 1896 to drive about in parts of this enclosure, but if you should have happened to go too near the forts without a permission card, you would probably have spent the next night in a prison, and what would have then occured it is diffictilt to know. In- deed, at table d'hote, I heard the German commer- cial travellers say that, without a permission card, they would not dare walk in the country about Metz, even at a great distance from any of the forts. One of the places that you are allowed to see is the house where Marshal Bazaine had his headquarters during the siege of Metz. It is a country house a mile or two outside the town, prettily situated among some trees at the foot of one of the high, fort-crowned hills. Near Bazaine's headquarters, I saw a sergeant teaching some raw recruits to fire from behind trees, and the way they did their work was truly wonderful. The sergeant went from one man to another, showing each one the proper position for loading and firing. 32 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. But no sooner did he move on to the next man than the recruit he had just left would get out of position and assume some grotesque attitude. In the latter part of 1894, I wrote concerning the nationality of the name of Metz as follows: "There is only one thing to show that the south- western half of the part of Lorraine that the Ger- mans annexed in 1871 is historically a German land ; it is the name of its chief town — Metz. That is a German name; but as it is surrounded on all sides by villages with French names, and the dis- trict around it is known to the inhabitants as le pays Messin, and every other thing about the town, except the garrison and the Germans who have settled there since the war of 1870-71, are French, it would seem to be a Teutonic name that has straggled across into the land of the Latins, just as you find along all frontier lines a mingling of names." ^ When the author wrote the above quoted para- graph, almost a quarter of a century ago, he had found only a relatively small amount of evidence as to the national origin of the name of the city ^ See Some Fads about Alsace and Lorraine, a paper read before the Geographical Club of Philadelphia, January 2nd, 1895; Bulletin of the Geographical Club oj Philadelphia, 1895, page 133. THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 33 of Metz in northern Lorraine. In the years that have passed since then, he has been able to collect much additional evidence that throws light on the origin of the name of that town. The name of the city of Metz in Lorraine on the River Moselle, which the French have called Metz-la-Pucelle, since until 1870 it was not cap- tured by a foreign army, is probably a contraction from the name of the earliest known historic inhab- itants of that region, the Mediomatricii. For many of the modern names of Europe, whether those of nations, provinces, cities or rivers, are derived from the ancient Latin names that obtained in the days of the Roman Empire. Thus Great Britain comes from Brittania, Belgium from Belgia, Gavl from Gallia, Germany from Germania, Paris from the Parisii, Auvergne from the Arverni, Suabia from the Suevi, the River Moselle from the Mosella, Cologne or Koln from Colonia Agrippina, and so on. So what is more likely and reasonable than that the name of Metz-la-Pucelle is derived from the Roman name of the Mediomatricii. Looking further afield, both in French and German history, and in the lands of French and German speech, it becomes evident that Metz as a name is found in use in both the French and the 34 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. German languages. Thus in French there are such proper names as Beaumetz and Demetz, and in German such names as Metz and Steinmetz. Thus for instance, the French General, Pierre Claude Barbier du Metz, was born at Rosnay in Champagne in 1638 and died in 1690. Likewise, in the Great War, one of the French officers was Lieutenant- Colonel George Demetz of the "7^ regiment de marche de tirailleurs."^ On the other hand, the German engraver, Conrad Martin Metz, was born at Bonn in 1755 and died in 1827, and one of the German generals in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 was named von Steinmetz. Also Metz as a geographical name, either merely as Metz or in conjunction with some other syllable, is found in a number of widely scattered places within the sphere of both languages. In France, for instance, southwest of Cambrai there is Metz- en-Couture. And again, northwest of Amiens, there is the village of Beaumetz, while in Savoy, one of the villages in the region of Aix-les-Bains is named Metz. On the German side of the language frontier, one of the small burgs on the eastern slopes of the Vosges Mountains is known as Metzeral, and on the River Lahn, where the River ^ L'Afrique Frangaise, January and February, Paris, 1916, page 36. THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 35 Dill joins it, rises just outside of Wetzlar the small hill of Metzeburg. Instances of the use of the name Metz in one way or another in both languages could be multiplied. So it is evident that the name is common to both languages. But as the Lorraine town of Metz-la-Pucelle on the River Moselle is situated in a French speaking land and is surrounded on all sides with villages with French names, it seems safe to say that the name of that city is a French contraction from Mediomatricii rather than of German origin as are the names of Bremen or Frankfurt, for example. In a speech in the Reichstag in 1887, on the septanate military bill, Bismarck admitted that Metz was within the area of French speech, and was not annexed on the ground that it was a long lost German city.* It was taken from France in 1 871, the Chancellor said, upon the advice of Marshal Moltke, the elder, for military reasons. In the peace negotiations, Thiers had told Bismarck rather than give up both Belfort and Metz, France woiild fight on. So Bismarck, who was anxious * Die Reden des Minister prdsidenten und Reichskanzlers Furslen von Bismarck: edited by Horst Kohl, Stuttgart, 1894, Volume XII., page 187. 36 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. to conclude peace before the neutral powers began to interfere, consulted Moltke, as to whether they could allow one or the other to remain in French hands. The Marshal replied: "Belfort, yes! Metz is worth 100,000 men; the question is whether we wish to be 100,000 men weaker against France, if war breaks out again, or not." Thereupon Bismarck said to Thiers: "We will take Metz!" So in a speech delivered in the German Imperial Parliament a propos of an important military measure, the founder of the modern German Empire recognized publicly that in annexing Metz, the Germans were not recovering a German city filled with their long lost German brothers and sisters, but on the contrary that the Germans were taking a French town inhabited by French men and women, solely for the reason that thereby much strength would be added for the future to the military position of Germany. Also Metz was taken to enable Germany to annex French villages west and northwest of Metz, because of the rich iron ore deposits in the soil below. The chief city of Lorraine is Nancy. It was left to France by the peace of Frankfurt; and during the present war has remained fortunately at all times in the hands of the French. As a THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 37 result the town with its many historic and beautiful buildings and mementoes of the past has been spared the fate of- wanton destruction that has overtaken Noyon, St. Quentin, Reims and other places of northern France. The center of Nancy is the Place Stanislaus, named after Stanislaus Lesczynski, ex-King of Poland. He died in 1766, was the last duke of Lorraine, and laid out the Place Stanislaus from 1752 to 1757- But he was not a member of the ancient ducal house of Lorraine. When Francis of Lorraine, the last of his house to rule over the duchy, was betrothed to Maria Theresa, daughter of the Emperor Charles the Sixth, an exchange of territory was made whereby Francis of Lorraine should not carry his French speaking duchy with him to be added to the large possessions of the Hapsburgs, but that the duchy should eventually be added to the lands of the French crown. The duchy of Tuscany in northern Italy was at that time without a ruler. Accordingly, Francis of Lor- raine, in exchange for giving up his own duchy of Lorraine, was chosen ruler of Tuscany. By his mar- riage to Maria Theresa, the latter duchy was added to the conglomeration of lands that belonged to the House of Hapsburg. At the same time it was 38 THE QUESTION OF AlSACE AND LORRAINE. agreed that Stanislaus should be duke of the duchy of Lorraine as successor to Francis. The new duke's wife was a daughter of Louis Quinze; and it was arranged that after Stanislaus's death the duchy shotdd revert to the French crown. In these shiftings of sovereignty, the inhabitants were not consulted. But the result was that the French speaking people of the duchy of Lorraine were joined eventually to the kingdom of France, instead of to the non-French speaking possessions of the Hapsburgs. One of the mediaeval gates of Nancy, la Porte Saint-Nicholas, still remains. Upon its sides may be seen la croix de la Lorraine, the same cross that so many thousands of people have so often seen on the jars of preserved white and red currants put up at Bar-le-Duc. On the Promenade de la Papinifere there is a statue of Claude Gell^e, dit le Lorrain, by Rodin. Gell^e, who was born in 1610 at the Chateau de Champagne on the River Moselle near Mirecourt and who died in 1682, is considered as the great pioneer of modern out of door landscape painting. Turner thought so much of Claude Lorrain's work that in his will giving all his own paintings and drawings to the National Gallery, he stipulated that THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 39 two specific examples of his own paintings should be hung side by side with two of Claude's pictures that belonged to the Gallery. And since that time those four pictures have hung as Turner stipulated, and neither Claude's nor Turner's work loses by the comparison. In June, 1897, when I visited Nancy, which the Pan-Germanists call Nanzig and claim is a part of the greater Germany, the capital of the ancient duchy of Lorraine, an incident prophetic of later events occurred. A travelling theatrical company happened to be in town the day I arrived, and in the evening gave in the municipal theatre on the Place Stanislaus, a representation of Michael Stro- goff, the Courier of the Tzar, only a little before the defensive alliance between France and Russia had been proclaimed to the world. In the play that evening the two correspondents represented respectively a French and an English journal. At one point in the play, the English correspondent, placing one of his arms about the neck of his French confrere, said: "Les Anglais et les Fran- gais doivent etre des amis. Ensemble il peuvent battre le monde." (The English and the French must be friends. Together they can beat the world.) 40 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. In the unfortified capital of Lorraine, almost within the range then of the German heavy artillery in the forts on the hills about Metz, this exclama- tion roused the whole audience. A storm of applause broke forth, and it was repeated again and again, so that there could be no doubt in the mind of any one in the house that the sons and daughters of Lorraine wished to be on terms of friendship with England, against whom five centuries before Joan of Arc had led the armies of France. At Nancy the hotel porter who came up to brush my shoes was named Schmidt. He told me he was an Alsacian and had received permission from his Kreismeister to come to Nancy to work. "Your name is a German one," I said. "But it is also a French name," came the prompt reply, "for many Frenchmen are so called." From something in his manner, however, I have always more than half suspected that he was a German officer who spoke French exceedingly well, in fact too well, for an Alsacian of the humbler class; and who was work- ing at Nancy in the guise of an Alsacian by order of the German Government to pick up such infor- mation as he could about what the French were doing in the capital of Lorraine and the surround- ing country. THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 41 In the western part of Nancy, the Faubourg Saint Jean is built on the marsh wherein the body of Charles the Bold was found after the battle of Nancy. The exact spot is marked by a small Croix de Bourgoyne. Nancy has an equestrian statue of Due Ren6 Deux of Lorraine, who defeated Charles the Bold. Nancy also has a statue of Adolphe Thiers. In Nancy there is a Rue du Mont Desert, the same name that Champlain gave to the famous summer resort on the Maine coast. The University of Nancy has a school of forestry, the only one in France. In speaking of Lorraine, Jeanne d'Arc must not be forgotten. There is an admirable statue of her on the Place des Pyramides at Paris. This monu- m.ent of the French girl who roused the spirit of her uncrowned King and the French to drive the armies of the stranger back towards the borders of France, and then lead the Dauphin to Reims to be crowned as Charles Sept, was erected some years after the war with Prussia to give visual expression to the thoughts of the French people, that from the land of France once more, as in the past, the invader must be driven out. There is almost a replica of it in Fairmount Park, Philadel- phia, near the Girard Avenue Bridge. 42 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. In deciding whether Lorraine is a French or a German land, it is well to remember that the village of Domremy, where Johanne la bonne Lor- raine was born, is in Lorraine. And also it is well not to forget that this daughter of France, whose speech was French, left her home in the eastern part of the French King's domains to travel towards the west and not the east in order that she might meet and then help her liege lord the Dauphin, to be crowned at Reims King of France. THE QUESTION OP ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 43 IV. At the southern extremity of French Lorraine, there is the Territory of Belfort, the southern comer of Alsace that was not taken from France in 1 87 1 by Germany. If there were nothing else of interest in or about Belfort, the great lion built there by Bartholdi to commemorate the successful defense of the town by the French in the Franco- Prussian war would amply repay the intelligent traveller for visiting Belfort. In June, 1894, after spending a day at Reims to see once more its glorious cathedral, I stopped, en route for Switzerland, at Belfort. Arriving in the evening, I was up early the next day. From r Hotel de la Poste, near the railroad station, I could see rising above the town on the other side of the Savoureuse, the little stream upon which Belfort is situated, the great rock on whose side Bartholdi built up his lion, which is destined per- haps to be as well known in the world as Thorvalsen's famous lion, that the Danish sculptor carved at Lucerne out of the rock of the solid cliff to the memory of the Swiss guard of Louis Seize. Auguste Bartholdi of Colmar is the Alsacian sculp- 44 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. tor who created the statue of Liberty enlightening the World which rises in New York Harbor. The rock of Belfort rises out of the low and fiat strip of land that runs between the Vosges Moun- tains on the north and the Jura Range on the south. That valley forms a natural highway between Alsace on the one side and Burgundy on the other. The rock of Belfort in past centuries was the guard house that dominated that natural highway, known in history as la Porte de Bourgogne, or la Troupe de Belfort. The possession of that road has ever been a military advantage and strength to whom- ever was so fortunate as to hold the rock of Bel- fort. Under the protection of that natural fortress, the small town of Belfort grew. From Gallic times, it has been crowned with a fortification of some kind, until in comparatively recent centuries the French built upon its top a citadel. Then, during the war of 1870-71, they encircled the town with forts and trenches. After that war they built great forts far out in all directions from the town. French is spoken in Belfort and the surrounding villages today as it was likewise spoken in 1870 before the war with Prussia. On the Place d'Armes there is a monument known as le Monument Quand Meme. On the side a medallion contains bas THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 45 relief profiles of Colonel Denfert-Rochereau and President Thiers. For these two men together saved in 1871 Belfort to France; one by his mili- tary ability; the other by his diplomatic skill. On top there is a figure of an Alsacian woman who has taken up the arms of a French soldier who has just been shot. The statue seems to say, "Quand meme," ("Nevertheless I will struggle on for France against the stranger."). I had some difficulty in finding the road to the foot of the rock, so that I might mount to the platform in front of Bartholdi's lion. I asked the way of one or two civilians who did not seem to realize that there was a lion built in stone up there. In fact, one of these men told me there was but one railroad station in the town, and that it was used alike by the trains bound for Paris and Lyons. For my inquiry about the lion of Bartholdi he translated in his mind to mean the city of Lyons. That any one would stop off to see the monument erected to Denfert-Rochereau and his troops never occurred to him. Finally, I inquired of a soldier and as he was himself bound for the citadel, he was only too glad to show me the way. A colossal figure, about eighty feet long and forty high, the lion is lying down on his hind legs, 46 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. but raised on his fore legs, with his head erect and defiant. A splendid image of a lion at bay, it truly personifies the French defense of the town in 1 87 1 under Denfert-Rochereau. It is built up with great blocks of stone against the side of the rock upon which the old citadel of Belfort stands. When I stood at the feet of this colossal lion a Frenchman whom I found there pointed out a hill not very far away to the northwest of the town where the Germans by building parallels tried hard to place their batteries. "If the Ger- mans had succeeded in planting their cannons there," he said, "they would have dominated our defences, and we should no longer today be French. But our 'General,'" he called Colonel Denfert- Rochereau by that title, "our General hurled so many shells upon that hill that the Germans were not able to effect a lodgment there. And so today we are French and the tri-color floats over the citadel there above us." Then he pointed out to me the modern forts way up on the Vosges Moun- tains at Giromagny and other places far beyond the range of the cannon of 1870 and '71. Across the front below the lion you notice the inscription: Aux d^jenseurs de Belfort. Well, THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 47 the lion who commanded those defenders and enabled M. Thiers to retain Belfort for France in the peace negotiations with Prince Bismarck was Colonel Denfert-Rochereau. He was a native of Saint Maixent, in the department of the Deux- Sevres, in the west of France, and belonged to the French Reformed Church. This French Prot- estant soldier — ^who held with success the Germans at bay at Belfort in 1870-71 as Caspar de Coligny checked the army of Philip the Second of Spain at Saint Quentin in 1552 until Henri Deux could collect the French forces together — ^has linked the name of Denfort-Rochereau as inseparably with Belfort as the noble Catholic Bishop of Metz, Monseigneur Dupont des Loges had bound his own name with the latter town. The energetic and successful defense of Belfort by Denfert-Rochereau against the army of General von der Thann not only saved Belfort and a comer of Alsace to France in 1 87 1, but likewise the Lutheran French speak- ing town of Montb^liard with a number of villages about it. Originally Montb^liard passed by mar- riage in 1397 to the German House of Wurttemberg. By the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the religion of the Prince was to be the religion of the land within the lands of the Holy Roman Empire. As 48 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. the House of Wurttemberg belonged to the Confes- sion of Augsburg, the inhabitants of the French speaking town of MontbeHard, which the Germans call Montpelgard, together with the surrounding villages, were secured in their adherence to the Confession of Augsburg. MontbeHard in that way became a refuge for the oppressed French Prot- estants of the surrounding lands. That explains why this little French town, one of whose most illustrious sons was the scientist Georges Cuvier, professes the Lutheran religion. In grateful recog- nition of the saving of its French nationality, in 1 87 1, the town of Montb^liard erected a monu- ment to Denfert-Rochereau. Though he never was promoted to the rank of general in the French army, Denfert-Rochereau commanded as a suc- cessful general in his defense of Belfort. In 1871 he was elected as a Republican by Belfort in the Department of the Upper Rhine to the National Assembly at Bordeaux. To-day, besides the monument to the memory of Denfert-Rochereau at Montb^liard and that in connection with Thiers at Belfort, there is a monu- ment to him in his native town of Saint-Maixent and also in the Bois-de-Boulogne at Paris. A propos of this successful French military com- THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 49 mander in the war of 1870-71, the lines, famous in France, of Henry de Bornier, may well be quoted: "O France! douce France! 6 ma France b^nie, Rien n'^puisera done ta force et ton g^nie! * * * "Puisque, malgre tes jours de deuil et de mis^re, Tu trouves un h^ros des qu'il est n&essaire!" "O France! sweet France! Oh my adored France, Nothing then can exhaust thy strength and thy genius! * * * "Since, despite thy days of mourning and misery. Thou findest a hero as soon as he is needed!" 50 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. V. There are some radical differences between Alsace on the one hand and Lorraine on the other. Alsace is peopled almost entirely, as we have seen above, by a race of Teutonic stock, while Lorraine is inhabited for the most part by French people. Thus the language boundary between French and German gives to the French language one or two villages at the southern end of Alsace, which are backed up against French speaking Switzer- land, but not adjoining France. A little further north, on the German side of the frontier of 1 87 1, opposite to Belfort, there are more villages speaking French. Higher up still, northwest from Colmar, the French language passes over the frontier at the top of the Col du Bonhomme and spreads down into the upper part of the valley of the Weiss. Further north still, oppo- site Schlettstadt, French again appears on the eastern slope of the Vosges, running up to the Mont Donon. The rest of Alsace is a German speaking land. In Lorraine the language boundary begins on the slopes of the Donon and, with local zigzags and loops, runs in a generally northwesterly THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 51 direction until it reaches the southern frontier of Luxembourg, just a little east of the present Franco- German frontier. The language frontier leaves Sar- reburg, Bolchen and Diedenhofen (in French, Thionville) within the area of German speech, while Dieuze, Pange, Metz, Fontoy (in German Fentsch) are on the French side of the language frontier. If the annexed portion of Lorraine where French is spoken by the native population, which includes le pays Messin and the territory about Chateau Salins and Dieuze to the top of the Mont Donon, is added to all of Lorraine which was left to France in 1871, it is readily seen that only a small part of the former province of Lorraine falls within the area of the German tongue. The line of the language boundary has varied but little in the course of the centuries. Sometimes one language has gained a little, and sometimes the other, at the expense of the rival tongue. It was along the crest of the Vosges Mountains which in the main separate Alsace and Lorraine from one another, that the advance of Roman customs and the influence of the Latin language was stopped. The language frontier has in the main run along the summits of the Vosges Mountains, leaving Alsace for the most part within the area of German 52 THE QUESTION OP AI^ACE AND LORRAINE. speech, and Lorraine with a small exception within the range of the French idioms. Passing north- ward into the Low Countries the boundary between Walloon and Flemish has varied but little in the flux and reflux of the Latin and the Germanic dialects. Outside of the slow and gradual but ever steady pushing back, since the reign of Louis Quatorze, of Flemish by French in French Flanders, the chief change has been a gain for French at the expense of Flemish in the cities of Flanders, espec- ially in the city of Brussels. In the latter town, where originally only Flemish was spoken, four- fifths of the inhabitants now use French as their mother tongue. Practically an island of French speech which has gradually grown up within the area of one of the Low Dutch branches of the Germanic dialects, Brussels in all probability before many years will be firmly anchored on its south- eastern and eastern sides to the Walloon speaking district of Belgitim. While the language frontier between the French and the Germanic dialects has not changed very much for a thousand years, the divisional line between the lands that owed allegiance to the Germanic Emperor on the one hand and the French King on the other has varied greatly. And this THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 53 variation in the political allegiance of the lands lying between the Germanic Empire on the one side and the rising Kingdom of France on the other were all the greater owing to the partial but finally unsuccessful growth in feudal times of another political social organism round the house of Burgundy. Ever since 1871 a great deal has been heard in the world at large about the names Alsace and Lorraine meaning only the land transferred at the end of the Franco-Prussian War from France to Germany. The names "Alsace and Lorraine," how- ever, are a misnomer if applied merely to the land ceded by France and annexed to Germany by the treaty of peace signed at Frankfurt on May loth, 1 87 1. For the names Alsace and Lorraine signi- fied in 1870, much more territory than the Reichs- land or Land of the Empire, which Germany gained at the expense of France at the close of the Franco- Prussian War. In the first place, a small part of northern Alsace, including the city of Landau, and a portion of northern Lorraine, including Sarrelouis on the River Sarre, were taken from France and annexed respectively to Bavaria and Prussia in 1815 by the Second Congress of Vienna^ In the second place, while it is true that almost all 54 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. of Alsace was taken from France by the peace of Frankfurt, nevertheless, by that peace France lost not more than about a quarter of the ancient Ducal Province of Lorraine. Also after the loth of May, 1 87 1, France still retained a small portion of southwestern Alsace, the town of Belfort and a little land about it. So when the names Alsace and Lorraine are used, it must not be forgotten that that pair of names designates a territory much larger than the extent of the territory ceded by France to Germany in 1871. THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 55 VI. The various political changes which in all the centuries since Chariemagne have overtaken the lands known for approximately a thousand years under the names of Alsace and Lorraine demand, for a clear understanding of the question of Alsace and Lorraine that was bom in 1871, a brief his- torical survey of the varying fortunes that have taken place in the development of those lands. Originally when Julius Caesar conquered the Gauls about the middle of the first century before the Christian era, the River Rhine was the bound- ary between the Celts on the west and the Teutons on the east. It was owing to the occupancy for so long by the Romans of all the lands west of the Rhine that the great cities on the banks of that river, such as Koln or Cologne (Colonia Agripinna), Coblentz (Confiuentia) , Strasbourg (Argentoratum) are mostly found on its left or western bank. About nine centuries after the Roman conquest of the Gauls, the beginning of the cleavage that resulted in time in the difference between the French and the German civilizations and in the course of later centuries resolved itself in the forma- 56 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. tion of the modem French and German Nations, took concrete expression in the famous Strasbourg oaths of 842. The territorial possession that Char- lemagne's genius had welded into a vast empire, which in men's minds was somehow looked upon as a continuation of the empire of the Caesars, was about to be divided between the three grand- sons of the great Carlovingian emperor. The two younger grandsons, Charles the Bald, who was to receive lands in the west, and Louis the German, who was to have lands in the east, were in fear of the power of the eldest brother, Lothaire, who was to rule from the North Sea to below the River Tiber in the middle lands between the possessions of the other two. Accordingly the year before the treaty of Verdun of 843, the two younger grand- sons met with their armies at Argentoratum, the present Strasbourg on the River 111 near the Rhine. There they swore to an identical oath to support one another in case of need, against a possible attack from Lothaire. Charles the Bald took it in the lingua teudisca before the army of Louis the German; and the latter swore to it in the lingua romana before the assembled hosts of Charles the Bald. Both idioms doubtless were understood by most of the inhabitants of Argentoratum just as THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 57 French and German are the joint possession of the great majority of Strasbourgers to-day. In Lothaire's Middle Kingdom were included Alsace and all of the later Duchy of Lorraine. It was from Lothaire's name that the name of Lothar- ingia was given to a large tract of his possessions. Applied to an ever varying extent of land including at first in part the Netherlands and also the region of the upper Moselle and the Meuse, the name Lorraine finally in the heyday of the feudal system came to be applied to a Duchy along the upper reaches of the Moselle and the Meuse, with which at various times through the rules of succession of the feudal law were joined and incorporated the smaller Duchies of Bar and Vaudemont. It was only about 870 when Lothaire's Middle Kingdom, then nominally ruled over by his grand- son, was curtailed to the advantage of his two younger brothers, that Louis the German entered into possession of Alsace. Then the Vosges Moun- tains, instead of the River Rhine which in earlier times had divided the Germanic tribes from Celtic Gaul, became the boundary between the Germanic and the Prankish lands. As the vast empire moulded and held together by the genius of Charlemagne disintegrated with 58 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. the passing of the years into the vast number of small feudal holdings that were better adapted to the conditions of the time, the feudal house that ruled at Paris on the River Seine known as the Capetian House, became absolutely independent and free of all control of the Germanic Empire that succeeded that of the Carlo vingians. The Cape- tians, starting with Paris as the kernel of their landed possessions, extended decade by decade gradually upon the basis of the feudal law their territorial holdings, sometimes by conquest and sometimes by marriage. In time their domain developed into the Kingdom of France. That kingdom which was infinitely smaller at first than modern France, was ruled by the house founded by Hugh Capet. And it was the policy of the suc- cessors of Hugh Capet to extend their rule more and more over various feudal lands that spoke French idioms. And so in time the Kings of France became gradually stronger and stronger. As the Carlo vingian Empire broke up, however, concurrently with the rise of the kingdom of France in the west outside of the scope of the Germanic Empire, the feudal lords of what is to-day all of Alsace, as well under French as German rule, and the major portion of the modern province of Lor- THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 59 raine on both sides of the frontier of 1871, besides much else of present day France, acknowledged the Germanic Emperor as their feudal overlord and protector. Only a comparatively small part of the fiefs that became in time part of western Lorraine were held immediately or mediately of the French King at Paris as suzerain. In the best times of the feudal system, among the lands that were independent of the Duchy of Lorraine but subsequently became part of the province of Lorraine, under French rule, were the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun. The three ecclesiastical lord bishops of Metz, Toul and Verdun held their lands as fiefs of the Emperor of the so-called Holy Roman Empire, but that came in truth in time to be the Germanic Empire, and acknowledged the Germanic Emperor as their feudal overlord, exactly as the ecclesiastical lord bishops of Mainz, Cologne (Koln), and Halber- stadt also did. But there was this radical differ- ence between the two triumvirates of towns. In Metz, Toul and Verdun, French dialects were spoken, while at Mainz, Cologne and Halberstadt, German idioms were current. In 1552 Henri Deux, who was befriending the Protestant Princes of Germany against their overlord, the Catholic 60 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. Germanic Emperor, seized with the full approval of Maurice, Elector of Saxony, Albert, Elector of Bran- denburg, and other German Protestant Princes, who were the virtual allies of the King of France, the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun, and almost at once had them formally united by the action of the Chambres de reunion with the Kingdom of France. But to-day no one with the least knowledge of the past and present history of Cen- tral Europe would assert that Toul and Verdun are Germanic towns that by language and racial affinities belong of right to modern Germany, because in times past the lord bishops of Toul and Verdun looked up to the Germanic Emperor as their liege overlord and those two towns according to the feudal law were considered to form part and parcel of the Empire. And just as truly as Toul and Verdun are French towns, so Metz, too, is a French city that has grown up within the area of the French patois or dialects. Until 1871, Metz was inhabited by men and women of the French race: and, excepting the German immigrants who have settled there since the peace of Frankfurt, it is still inhabited by the French race, though it has formed ever since the loth of May, 1871, a political part of the modern German Empire. THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 61 The only claim that four-fifths of the old French province of Lorraine was originally a German land that the French annexed, a portion at a time, and then Gallicized, is that the three bishoprics, as well as portions of the Duchies of Lorraine and Bar, came, in one way or another, according to the rules of the feudal law, to form a part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the Middle Ages, however, within the area of French idioms to the west of the Vosges Mountains, the cities of Metz, Toul and Verdun with their surrounding territories, and the Duchy of Bar and much of that of Lorraine and neighbor- ing fiefs were not the only lands to acknowledge the Germanic Emperor as their feudal overlord. Next to Switzerland on its western side, Franche- Comte, and even lands further south lying between the Alps and the River Rhdne, looked in those times also to the Emperor as their feudal superior and were considered to form part of the Empire. If you sailed, some years ago, down the River Rhone from Lyons to the sea, you could hear the people speak of the right bank as the "Royaume" and the left bank as the "Empire." These terms had come down from the time when the right bank belonged to the Kings of France and the left to the 62 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. Holy Roman Empire. Yet no one would say that the people of the left bank were not Frenchmen simply because their lands, some centuries ago, formed part of that conglomeration of races and feudal holdings, the so called Holy Roman Empire of which Voltaire said with much truth that "it was neither Holy, Roman, nor an Empire." The three bishoprics, through conquest, and the Duchies of Bar and Lorraine, partly by conquest and partly by marriage, were all incorporated with the Kingdom of France much later than another French province, Bretagne, was through marriage. And unlike the three bishoprics, the Duchy of Bar and most of the Duchy of Lorraine, which were all within the area of the French patois, Bretagne was not a French speaking land. Even today Bretagne retains in many places its ancient Celtic tongue. When the Duchy of Bretagne, where the Salic Law did not obtain, descended to Anne de Bretagne, as Duchess in her own right, the Emperor Maximilian of Hapsburg was most anxious to add such a rich prize to his ancestral domains. Accord- ingly, he succeeded in marrying Anne de Bretagne by proxy. But the counsellors of the French King decided that it would never do to allow so large a THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 63 land lying to the west of the possessions of the French crown to pass into the hands of the House of Hapsburg. Accordingly, proclaiming that the marriage by proxy was not binding and a finality, since it had not been consummated, they prevailed on the Duchess of Bretagne, by capturing her and the city of Rennes, to marry their own King, Charles Huit. By that marriage Bretagne was brought into political union with the lands of the French Crown. So important to the safety of the possessions of the French Crown did the leading statesmen of France consider a close union with Bretagne that, upon the death of Charles Huit without surviving issue, they at once insisted that his successor, a cousin, Louis Douze, should divorce his wife, who was a sister of Charles Huit, and then become the second husband of Anne de Bretagne. As there were no sons of this royal union between Anne de Bretagne and Louis Douze, upon the death of the King the lands of France, where the Salic Law prevailed, did not pass to his daugh- ter, Claude de France, but to a cousin, Frangois d'Angouleme, who then became King as Frangois Premier. Bretagne, however, where the Salic Law was not recognized, passed upon the death of Anne de Bretagne to the daughter of Anne and Louis 64 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. Douze, who was known as Claude de France. Accordingly, to prevent, by the feudal law, Bretagne being broken ofif from its political union with the French Crown lands and perhaps passing eventually by marriage to the House of Hapsburg, a marriage was arranged between Frangois d'Angouleme and Claude de France. In that way the close political union between the lands of the French Crown and the Duchy of Bretagne was continued. Event- ually, upon their death, both Bretagne and the French Crown lands descended to their son, who became, in right of succession from his father. King of France as Henri Deux, and also in right of suc- cession from his mother, Duke of Bretagne. While the kingship and the dukeship were thus finally united in one and the same person, it was not until 1598, however, that the Duchy of Bretagne was finally, in the person of Henry of Navarre, merged into the lands of the French Crown. Thus a land lying to the westward of the French speaking lands, and where another tongue than French was spoken, in the course of about a century and a half was finally incorporated by the workings of the feudal law with the lands of the French Crown, and in that way eventually incorporated into the more modern French Nation. But even today, in many THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 65 parts of Bretagne, Breton and not French is the language of every day use among the people. After the death of Gustavus Adolphus the Great of Sweden in 1632, on the battlefield of Liitzen, the German Protestant Princes were hard pressed by the Catholic Hapsburg Emperor. In order to make headway against the Emperor, the princes sought the aid of Louis Treize. The principal minister of the French King, Cardinal Richelieu, had captured in 1628 the chief stronghold of the French Protestants, La Rochelle. At home his aim was to suppress so far as possible the military and political power of the Huguenots. In his foreign policy, however, Richelieu wished to expand France and curb and reduce the power of the great rival of France, the Imperial and Catholic House of Hapsburg. For that reason it was not to the interest of France that the German Protestant Princes should be submerged by the Catholic Emperor. Accordingly, about 1633, at the invita- tion of George William, Elector of Brandenburg, and other German Protestant Princes, Richelieu, who had aided Gustavus Adolphus with French subsidies during the Swedish King's German cam- paign, agreed with the Protestant Princes in exchange for the right of France occupying a large 66 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. part of what is now modem Alsace, to throw the influence of France into the scales of the Thirty- Years' War on the side of the Protestant Princes against the Catholic Emperor. When that long and devastating war came to a close in 1648, by the Peace of Westphalia, the religious character with which it had opened had changed largely to a political one. By the terms of peace to the King of France, who was by the end of the war in actual possession of much of modem Alsace, were officially trans- ferred many feudal rights of suzerainty over the cities and fiefs which he occupied in Alsace that formerly had belonged to the Hapsburg Emperor. That gain for Louis Quatorze as feudal overlord in much of Alsace at the expense of the Germanic Emperor, was the price paid by the German Prot- estant Princes for effectual French aid against their arch enemy, the Catholic Emperor. Outside of this arrangement was the city republic of Strasbourg, which was a Free City of the Empire, and the city republic of Mulhouse which was affil- iated with the Swiss Cantons. More than a genera- tion after the Peace of Westphalia, Louis Quatorze, owing to the great power of France, was able to occupy the Free Imperial City of Strasbourg. By THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 67 an agreement entered into between the King and the city, the burghers were confirmed in all their customs and privileges, as well as the free exercise of their Protestant religion and, with the exception of the cathedral, the possession of their churches and other religious establishments. The cathedral where the Protestant service had been held since 1529 was taken in 1681 by the King for Catholic worship. In Alsace as a whole, and especially in Stras- bourg, the French Government did not molest the people in their customs and institutions. Espec- ially the religious persecutions which were enforced after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) with great vigor in all the other lands of the King except Alsace, were practised in the latter province in much milder form. In other words, the French King did not try to ram French ideas and customs down the throats of the Alsacians against their will. As a result, the Alsacians who were German in race and speech, but were not attached especi- ally to the more or less moribund Holy Roman or Germanic Empire, gradually almost unconsciously began to absorb French thoughts and among the upper classes in some cases began to learn the French language. 68 THE QUESTION OP ALSACE AISTD LORRAINE. Then came the French Revolution. One of its causes was the desire of the workmen of that day to break the restrictive chains that prevented them from working freely, the same sort of chains which the workmen of to-day, ignorant of those their great grandfathers rose against, are so busy and anxious to forge through the means of the Trade Unions once more about themselves. As a result of the French Revolution, the countless restrictions that weighed upon the freedom of the individual and restricted trade, were suddenly removed. The great boon thereby conferred upon the people of Alsace as a whole won their hearts entirely to France. So much so indeed, that in the wars of the Republic and the Great French Emperor, Alsace gave her full quota of generals and soldiers to the armies of France. And in 1798, the free city republic of Mulhouse in southern Alsace, which had been in close affiliation for a long time with the Swiss Cantons, of its own free will, with- out compulsion or force of any sort, joined itself to the French Republic. While the Kingdom of France ultimately in its growth eastward, absorbing not only French speak- ing lands but also German ones, was to meet the modern German Nation along the boundary of the THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 69 middle Rhine, another State, whose people spoke in part French and in part German, struggled to arise between the growing modern France and Germany out of the welter of smaU feudal holdings of the Middle Ages. The attempt to create a Burgundian Nation between those of modern France and Germany reached its farthest develop- ment under the ambitious leadership of Charles the Bold. His feudal holdings included lands such as the County of Burgundy with Besangon as the chief city, and many fiefs in the Netherlands, for all of which he acknowledged the Germanic Emperor as feudal overlord, while other lands, like the Duchy of Burgundy with Dijon as its chief city, he held of the French King as his feudal overlord. At the height of his power, Charles the Bold added to his landed possessions much of Alsace by pur- chase from the House of Hapsburg. And it was as a result of his eager efforts to include the then Duchy of Lorraine by conquest with his landed possessions that under the walls of Nancy, alike then and to-day within the area of French idioms, he met his death in battle in 1477 with the army under Duke Ren6 Deux of Lorraine and the latter's Swiss allies. While in western Europe, England, France and 70 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORfiAINE. Spain were moulded gradually into three Nations, in each case round a royal house, so that at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War in 1618 these three Nations had grown in large measure out of the feudal status which had prevailed all over western and central Europe since at least as early a time as the seventh century of our era, Britain was begun only in 1603. In that year Celtic Scotland and Saxon England were united together owing to the working of the feudal law which placed a Scottish King, in the person of James the Sixth of Scotland, upon the English throne as James the First of England. In that way Scot- land was linked by law with England as in the fifteenth century by three successive marriages between two Duchesses of Bretagne and three Kings of France, Celtic Bretagne was joined to Latin France. Not until a much later date, the third quarter of the nineteenth century, were a German and an Italian Nation constructed in central Europe respec- tively by the genius of a Bismarck and a Cavour. When the National Assembly of France met at Bordeaux in 1871 to consider terms of peace with Germany, the deputies elected by the departments of the Upper Rhine and the Lower Rhine, which THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 71 together formed in the time of the Old Regime the former province of Alsace; and also the deputies elected by the four departments of the Meurthe, the Moselle, the Meuse and the Vosges, which before the French Revolution had constituted the ancient province of Lorraine, joined on February 17th, in a solemn protest against any cession of any portion of either Alsace or Lorraine to the newly constituted German Empire. The protest was written by Gambetta, and read from the tribune of the National Assembly by Emile Keller. Colonel of the francs-tireurs of the Department of the Upper Rhine, Keller, who had fought valiantly all through the war in defense of France against the German invasion, was an Alsacian and the bearer of a German name. He was one of the deputies chosen by the Upper Rhine, his name being returned at the head of the poll. After clearly and forcibly proclaiming at length the unalterable desire of the people of Alsace and Lorraine to remain French, the representatives of the two provinces made this remarkable prophecy which time has proved to have been correct: -^ Y "Peace made by the price of a cession of territory would be nothing but a ruinous truce and not a definite peace. It would be for every one a cause 72 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. of internal agitation, a legitimate and permanent provocation of war. And as for us, Alsacians and Lorrainers, we will be ready to begin again to-day, to-morrow, at every hour, at every instant." ) Then again protesting against any cession of territory, the representatives in their declaration proclaimed that beforehand they would not recognize as binding either for themselves or the people who sent them, any treaty or pact what- soever which would cede any part of either province to the stranger. And the declaration ended by saying: Ji ,( "We proclaim by the present forever inviolable the right of the Alsacians and the Lorrainers to remain members of the French nation and we swear, as well for ourselves as our constituents, our children and their descendants to reclaim it etern- ally and against all usurpers." J On March ist, 1871, when it was known that the National Assembly, under the compulsion of force, would agree to the cession of most of Alsace and a portion of Lorraine, the deputies of the ter- ritories that were about to be given up to the stranger, made one more formal protest before retiring from the deliberation of the Assembly. Jules Grosjean, formerly prefect of the Upper THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 72> Rhine, and at the time one of the deputies of that department, mounted to the tribune of the Assembly and read the following declaration: "The representatives of Alsace and Lorraine, placed, before any peace negotiations were carried on, upon the table of the National Assembly, a declaration affirming in the most formal manner, in the name of those provinces, their wish and right to remain French. "Handed over, in spite of all justice and by an odious abuse of force, to the domination of strangers, we have a last duty to perform. "We declare once more null and void a pact which disposes of us without our consent- ment. "The revindication of our rights remains forever open to all and everyone in the manner and the measure that our conscience shall dictate. "At the moment of leaving this hall where our self respect does not allow us longer to remain, and in spite of the bitterness of our sorrow, the supreme thought which we find in our inmost hearts is a thought of grateful appreciation for those who, during six months, have not ceased to defend us and the unchangeable attachment of the country from which we are violently snatched. 74 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. "We will follow you with our wishes and we will wait, with a perfect confidence the future, that regenerated France takes up again the course of her great destiny. "Your brothers of Alsace and Lorraine, separ- ated at this time from the common family, will conserve for France, absent from their homes, a filial affection until the day when she will return to reoccupy her place." The next day the Republican deputies, to the number of thirty-seven, including Clemenceau, the present war premier, sent an address to the depu- ties of the lands about to be handed over to Ger- many, in which they said that they in the name of Republican France would not be bound by any agreement whatsoever that would cut off Alsace and part of Lorraine from France. So even weeks before peace was formally con- cluded and proclaimed at Frankfurt on May loth, 1 87 1, the populations of Alsace and annexed Lor- raine clearly and forcibly made known to all the world that they wished to remain attached to France and did not want to be handed over to be joined to Germany. The peoples of the annexed lands were of one mind on that point from the start. And they made their wishes known so that Tl-iE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LOR&AINE. 75 every one in the world, even in Germany, could understand, except those that did not wish to hear or understand. Ever since the treaty of Frankfurt was signed and most of Alsace and a part of Lorraine were taken away from France, the French people have cherished in their hearts the hope that some day the lost provinces wiould be restored to France. This sentiment was expressed by Gambetta, who said: Pensons y toujour s, mats n'en parlons pas! The thoughts of the French people for the lost provinces have been expressed in various ways. In almost every town in France there is either a Boulevard d'Alsace-Lorraine, or an Avenue de Metz and an Avenue de Strasbourg, a Rue de Mulhouse or a Boulevard Gambetta, an Avenue Thiers or a Rue Denfert-Rochereau. Especially at Paris on the 14th of July, the national fete day, the Alsacian-Lorrain societies have placed with great solemnity, in the presence of many thousands of people, upon the statue personifying the city of Strasbourg, on the Place de la Concorde, funeral badges. Those signs of mourning the Statue of Strasbourg has worn until the next 14th of July, when the Alsacian-Lorrain societies have taken them down to replace them 76 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. with fresh badges of mourning upon the head and robes of "Strasbourg." One of the most potent causes of attachment of France for Alsace is the historic fact that at Stras- bourg was composed the soul stirring national hymn of France — la Marseillaise. On April 24th, 1792, when the declaration of war by France against Austria was known in Strasbourg, Mayor Dietrich rode through the town with a military escort and read aloud to the townspeople the declaration. That same evening he asked a French officer then in garrison at Strasbourg, Captain Rouget de I'lsle, who was known as both a poet and a com- poser, to write and compose a patriotic song that would suit the crisis. Accordingly, Rouget de risle closeted himself for a day in his room, and the next evening, in the parlors of Mayor Dietrich, the young officer of the Republic brought to a few assembled Alsacians, the Chant de guerre pour VArmee du Rhin. It was sung by the mayor. Acclaimed on that occasion, and gaining a local celebrity, it was introduced to all France a few months later and ultimately to the world, by a regiment of troops from the city of Marseille. As the regiment marched north on its way to join the army of the Rhine, the soldiers sang le Chant THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 77 de guerre pour I'Armee du Rhin. In every town and hamlet through which they passed it was popularly taken up and sung by the people. And as it was thus introduced to the French people by a regiment from Marseille, it was spontaneously named the Marseillaise. But in truth Rouget de risle's immortal song, which resounded in 1914 all along the battle of the Marne and on many another stricken field, should be known as la Strasbour- geoise. For it was in the chief city of Alsace that it was born and first sung. Less than four years after the signing of the peace of Frankfurt, the feeling of attachment of all France for Alsace was admirably expressed by Henri de Bornier in la chanson des deux sabres in his play, la Fille de Roland. The piece was given for the first time on February 15th, 1875, at the Theatre Frangais with Mounet-Sully as Gerald, who sings the song of the two swords. When Mounet-Sully finished the song on that night, the theatre rang with the applause of the whole audience until the theatre echoed and re-echoed. But it was not Mounet-Sully, great actor that he was, that the audience applauded, but the meaning conveyed in that song. Bornier said in language that was unmistakable to every Frenchman and French- 78 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. woman what all France was thinking but not talking about. "La France, dans ce sifecle, eut deux grandes 6p6es, Deux glaives, I'un royal et I'autre f^odal, Dont les lames d'un flot divin furent tremp^es; L'une a pour nom Joyeuse, et I'autre Durandal. "Roland eut Durandal. Charlemagne a Joyeuse. Soeurs jumelles de gloire, heroines d'acier, En qui vivait du fer Time myst^rieuse. Que pour son oeuvre Dieu voulut s'associer. Toutes les deux dans les m^l^es Entraient jetant leur rude Eclair, Et les bannieres etoil^es Les suivaient en flottant dans I'air! Quand elles faisaient leur ouvrage, L'etranger fremissant de rage, Sarrazins, Saxons, ou Danois, Tourbe hurlante et camassiere, Tombait dans la rouge poussifere, De ces formidables tournois! Durandal a conquis I'Espagne; Joyeuse a dompt^ le Lombard: Chacune h sa noble compagne THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 79 Pouvait dire: Voici ma part! Toutes les de\3x ont par le monde Suivi, chass6 le crime immonde, Vaincu les paiens en tout lieu; Apr^s mille et mille batailles, Aucune d'elles n'a d'entailles Pas plus que le glaive de Dieu! "H^las! La meme fin ne leur est pas donn^e: Joyeuse est fifere et libre apres tant de combats, Et quand Roland p^rit dans la sombre journ^e, Durandal des paiens fut captive Ik-bas! "Elle est captive encore, et la France la pleure, Mais le sort different laisse I'honneur 6gal, Et la France, attendant quelque chance meilleure, Aime du meme amour Joyeuse et Durandal!" 80 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. VII. The evidence submitted above would seem to show conclusively that the lands which Germany- took from France as a result of the utter defeat of the latter by the former in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, were peopled by inhabitants who, although about eighty-five per cent, of them were Germans in race and speech, were unanimous in their desire to remain themselves French citizens and to have their lands continue to form integral parts of the French Republic. And with the change of national sovereignty for those lands, over a million and a half of people who wished to remain French were transformed against their will into German subjects, unless they decided to emi- grate from their home land. But the transfer of nationality was merely on the stirface. The annexed Alsacians and Lorrainers remained at heart French and at the first opportunity they proclaimed this fact so that not only all Germany, but also all the world knew that their hearts beat in unison with France and they looked to the day when fortune would unite them once more with her. In 1874, three years after the conclusion of the THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 81 Franco- Prussian war, the people of the annexed lands were given the opportunity of electing fifteen members to represent the Reichsland in the Imperial Parliament at Berlin. And what did the people of Alsace and annexed Lorraine do with this oppor- tunity? They promptly sank their local differences, and united for the electoral campaign with but one object in mind, to wit, to send a solid delegation of fifteen representatives to the Reichstag at Berlin, who would protest against the continued forcible separation of Alsace and annexed- Lorraine from France and their continued inclusion with Germany. In spite of the energetic efforts of the German functionaries, the people of the annexed lands elected almost unanimously the fifteen protesting candidates. On the i6th of February the deputies of the Reichsland proposed to the Reichstag the following motion for future debate: "May it please the Reichstag to decide that the peoples of Alsace and Lorraine who, without being consulted, were annexed by the Treaty of Frank- furt to the Germanic Empire, may be called upon to vote specifically on that annexation." Two days later, on the i8th of February, the deputy elected by the district of Saverne or Zabern in Lorraine, Edouard Teutsch, arose in the Reichs- 82 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. tag to speak in support of the motion as the unanimous spokesman of the fifteen deputies rep- resenting Alsace and annexed Lorraine. As French was his national tongue, he asked for leave to speak in that language. As that request was naturally denied him, he read his speech in a German trans- lation, which he had made from the original French. The motion moved by M. Teutsch was rejected by the Parliament; but the presentation of that motion by the fifteen deputies of the Reichsland showed to all the world that the populations of the annexed lands were united in their opposition to German rule. From that day until the Great War began, the people of Alsace and annexed Lorraine, have again and again, whenever an opportunity occurred, shown their determined and unyielding opposition to German rule and their equally strong desire to be united once more with France. In view of this unquestionable desire of the annexed populations for forty-three long years to •be freed from German nationality and reincor- porated once more with France, it is safe to say that one of the chief causes that brought upon the world the Great War, was the forcible annexation in 1 87 1 of Alsace and part- of Lorraine. The THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 83 Spectacle of those lands held in bondage just across the frontier was a perpetual reminder to the people of France of the dangerous enemy that was on the other side of the Vosges Mountains. And in addi- tion, the forcible and continued separation from France of a million and a half of people who wished to be French appealed so strongly to the sympa- thies of the French people, that any hope of a final peaceful adjustment of the relations between France and Germany so long as Alsace and annexed Lor- raine remained under German rule was but a pipe dream. So it is entirely in the interest of justice and the future peace and tranquillity of the world that one of the conditions of the treaty that will end the World War is the restoration to France of the territory that was taken from her in 1871. The question of Alsace and Lorraine which has run on for close on to half a century may not have existed without good to the world if the obvious lesson which it teaches is taken to heart by the nations. That question shows clearly that, if the peoples are really anxious to reduce the chances for war to the utmost, in the future no land will be transferred from one allegiance to another against the avowed protest of the people inhabiting it. It will be well to take heed of this lesson at the 84 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. peace table that is to close the World War and not repeat the blunder the Germans made in 1871 in taking Alsace and a portion of Lorraine against the publicly and repeatedly expressed protest of the Alsacians and the Lorrainers as proclaimed to the world through their officially and freely chosen representatives to the French National Assembly at Bordeaux. The act of territorial vandalism committed in 1871 was one of the things that insured the World War. Let the nations profit by the lesson. INDEX INDEX. PAGE Albrecht Durer 9 Albert of Brandenburg 60 Alsace and Lorraine 1-3, 14, 15, 18, 29, 30, 33, 41-43, 47, 50, 51. 55. 57, 61, 62, 66-69, 71, 75. 77. 80-84 Alsace and Lorraine, protests of 71-74, 80-82 Amiens 22 America 20 Amerigo Vespuccius 19, 20 Angers, David d' 12 Amdt, Ernest Moritz 4 Augustus the Strong of Saxony 12 Bartholdi, Auguste 43, 45 Belfort 36, 43-45, 48, 50 Belfort, Lion of 43, 45, 46 Bismarck 35, 36, 47. 70 Bretagne 62-64, 70 Bretagne, Anne de 62-64 Bomier, Henri de 49, 77 Broglie, Place de 7, 13 Broglie, Prince de 13 Caesar, Julius 55 Capet, Hugh 58 Cavour 70 Charlemagne 55-57 Charles the Bald 56 Charles the Bold 41, 69 Charles Fifth, Emperor 28 Charles Huit 63 Charles Sept 42 Chartres 22 Claude de France 64 Claude GelUe, dit le Lorrain 38, 39 Clemenceau 74 Colmar 5, 43 Cologne 22,55 S6 INDEX. PAGE Cormontaigne 21 Coucy-le-Ch&teau 27 Custine, Comte de 28 Denfert-Rochereau, Colonel 45-48, 75 Divodunim 27 Dupont des Leges, Monseigneur 29, 30, 47 Erckmann-Chatrian 15, 18 Fabert, Marshal 28 Fille de Roland, la 77 Foch, Marshal 11 France 1-3, 13-15. I9 French race 21-23, 25, 26, 36, 50 Franco-Prussian War i, 3, 13, 14, 29, 31, 43, 80 Frederick Charles, the Red Prince 30 Gambetta 71, 75 George of Brandenburg 63 German race 3, 10, 13, 14, 18, 21, 22, 26, 29, 36, 50 Germany 1-3, 14, 16, 19, 30 Gutenberg 11 Harvard College 3 Henri Deux of France 47, 59, 60, 64 Holy Roman Empire 62 Joan of Arc 41, 42 Keller, Emile, Colonel 71 Kellermann, Franjois Christophe de, first duke of Valmy 11, 28 Kellermann, Franjois Etienne de, second duke of Valmy 28 Kl^ber, General 10, u, 15 Koechlin 5 Konigsmark, Countess Aurora von 12 La Fayette 20 Lasalle, General 29 Lothaire 56, 57 Louis Douze 63 Louis the German 56 Louis Treize 28, 65 Louis Quatorze 21, 28, 52, 66 Louis Quinze 21, 38 Louis Seize 43 INDEX. 89 PAGE Marseillaise, la 15, 76 Maria Theresa 37 Mediomatricii 33-35 Meistersingers 9 Wetz 17, 20-37, 40. 51, 59-61 Messin, pays 22-25, 27, 51 Moltke 35, 36 Montb^liard 47, 48 Mulhouse 5, 66 Nancy 36-41 Napoleon 4, 10, 11, 28, 30 Ney, Marshal 30 Oaths o£ Strasbourg 56 Petre 3o Phalsbourg 18 Pierrefonds 27 Pigalle, Jean Baptiste 12 Reichardt, Gustav 4 Reims 22, 37, 43 Ren^ Deux of Lorraine 19, 41, 69 Richelieu, Cardinal 15 Rouget de I'lsle, Captain 76, 77 Saint-Di6 19 Saint-Quentin 37 Salic law 63 Saxe, Marshal 12 Saxony, Maurice of 60 Stanislaus Lesczynski 37, 38 Strasbourg 6, 8-11, 13, 17, 21, 22, 66, 75 Slrasbourgeoise, la 77 Toul 59, 60 Uhrich, General 10 Vauban 21 Verdun 11, 25, 56, 59-61 Voltaire 62 Vosges Mountains 5, 9, 17-19, 34, 51, 57, 83 Waldseemiiller, Martin ly, 20 Westphalia, Peace of 47 WilUam I of Prussia 25, 30 OTHER WORKS BY THE AUTHOR. Some facts about Alsace and Lorraine, 1895. The Brooke Family of Whitchurch, Hampshire, England, together with an account of Acting-Governor Robert Brooke of Maryland and Colonel Ninian Beall of Maryland, 1899. The Alabama Arbitration, 1900. fimeric Cruc6, 1900. The Alasko-Canadian Frontier, 1902. The Alaska Frontier, 1903. The English Ancestors of the Shippens and Edward Shippen of Philadelphia, 1904. The Swift Family of Philadelphia, 1906. Balch Genealogica, 1907. L'Evolution de I'Arbitrage International, 1908. La Bale d'Hudson est elle une mer libre ou une mer ferm^e? 1911. La Bale d'Hudson est une grande mer ouverte, 1913. Diflerends juridiques et politiques dans les rapports des Nations, 1914. "Arbitration" as a term of International Law, 1915. The Influence of the United States on the Development of the Law between Nations, 1915. Legal and Political International Questions and the Recurrence of War, 1916. The Philadelphia Assemblies, 1916. A World Court in the Light of the United States Supreme Coirrt, 1918. Translated Le Nouveau Cynee of Emeric Cruce, 1909. Republished several times International Courts of Arbitra- tion of Thomas Balch.