“repris de justice,” or as we should say “people under police supervision,” who are spending in Paris the interval between two terms in prison.  They are congregating in the city in considerable numbers and are ready to serve disorder and pillage wherever it may be.  It is these people who gave to the movement, before we had scrutinized its theoretical aims, the occasionally prominent character which seemed to threaten civilization, and which, in the interest of humanity, I now hope has been overcome.  It is, of course, quite possible that it may recur.

In addition to this flotsam, which is found in large masses in every big city, the militia which I mentioned consists of many adherents of an international European republic.  I have been told the figures with which the foreign nations are there represented, but I remember only that almost eight thousand Englishmen are said to be in Paris for the sake of seeing the realization of their plans.  I assume that these so-called Englishmen are largely Irish Fenians.  And then there are many Belgians, Poles, adherents of Garibaldi, and Italians.  They are people who really do not care much for the “Commune” and French liberty.  They expect something else, and they were, of course, not meant, when I said that there is a grain of sense in every movement.

The needs and wishes of the large French communities are thoroughly justified, considering not only their own political past, which grants them a very moderate amount of freedom, but also the tradition of the French statesmen who are offering to the cities their very best possible compromise with municipal freedom.  The inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine have felt these needs most forcefully owing to their German character, which is stronger than the French character in its demands for individual and municipal independence.  Personally I am convinced that we can grant the people of Alsace and Lorraine, at the very start, a freer scope in self government without endangering the empire as a whole.  Gradually this will be broadened until it approaches the ideal, when every individual and every community possesses as much freedom as is at all compatible with the order of the State as a whole.  I consider it the duty of reasonable statesmanship to try to reach this goal or to come as near to it as possible.  And this is much easier, with our present German institutions, than it will ever be in France with the French character and the French centralized system of government.  I believe, therefore, that, with German patience and benevolence, we shall succeed in winning the men of Alsace and Lorraine—­perhaps in a briefer space of time than people today expect.

But there will always be some residuary elements, rooted with every personal memory in France and too old to be transplanted, or necessarily connected with France by material interests.  For them there will be no compensation for the broken French bonds, or at least none for some time to come.  We must, therefore, not permit ourselves to believe that the goal is in sight, and that Alsace will soon be as intensely German in feeling as Thuringia.  On the other hand, we need not give up the hope of living to see the realization of our plans provided we fulfill the time generally allotted to man.