I asked about the amount of inter-marriage that had taken place during the forty years.  Dr. Bucher thought it had been inconsiderable—­and that the marriages, contracted generally between German subalterns and girls of the inn-keeping or small farming class, had been rarely happy.  The Alsatian strain was the stronger, and the wife’s relations despised the German intruder.  “Not long before the war I came upon two small boys fighting in a back street.”  The boy that was getting the worst of it was abusing the other, and Dr. Bucher caught the words—­“dirty Prussian!” (sale Prussien!) The boy at whom this was hurled, stopped suddenly, with a troubled face, as though he were going to cry.  “No—­no!—­not me!—­not me! my father!” Strange, tragic little tale!

As to the Church, a curious situation existed at that moment in Strasbourg.  The Archbishop, a good man, of distinguished German birth, was respected and liked by his clergy, who were, however, French in sympathies almost to a man.  The Archbishop, who had naturally excused himself from singing the victors’ Te Deum in the Cathedral, felt that it would be wiser for him to go, and proposed to Rome that he should resign his see.  His clergy, though personally attached to him, were anxious that there should be no complications with the French Government, and supported his wish to resign.  But Rome had refused.  Why?  No doubt because the whole position of the Church and of Catholicism in these very Catholic provinces represents an important card in the hand of the Vatican, supposing the Papacy should desire at any time to reopen the Church and State question with Republican France.  What is practically the regime of the Napoleonic Concordat still obtains in the recovered provinces.  The clergy have always been paid by the State, and will be still paid, I understand, in spite of the Combes laws, by a special subvention, for the distribution of which the bishops will be responsible.  And M. Clemenceau, as the French Prime Minister, has already nominated one or more bishops, as was the case throughout France itself up to 1905.

Everything indeed will be done to satisfy the recovered provinces that can be done.  They are at present the spoiled children of France; and the poor devastated North looks on half enviously, inclined to think that “Paris forgets us!”—­in the joy of the lost ones found.  But Paris knows very well that there are difficulties ahead, and that the French love of symmetry and logic will have to make substantial concessions here and there to the local situation.  There are a number of institutions, for instance, which have grown up and covered the country since 1871, which cannot be easily fitted to the ordinary cadre of French departmental government.  The department would be too small a unit.  The German insurance system, again, is far better and more comprehensive than the French, and will have, in one way or another, to be taken over.