This may be the German conception of “utmost restraint and forbearance,” but it appeared to the French, as it did to the rest of the world, that it required their utmost restraint and forbearance to remain calm under the affronts.

The fact that Alsace-Lorraine was German up to the seventeenth century, and inhabited by German stock, cannot be brought forward today, after more than 200 years, to justify the retaking of those provinces by the Germans.  The whole world would be in a state of continual warfare if nations claimed provinces or States that belonged to them once upon a time.  Richelieu’s idea was that the Rhine was the natural and geographical frontier between France and Germany, and the war was undertaken to carry out that plan.  Since then the inhabitants have become French, and the attempts to re-Germanize them have proved futile.  Prof.  Francke may well doubt if the acquisition of these provinces was a fortunate thing for Germany.  It was undoubtedly the most unfortunate thing not only for Germany but for France and the rest of Europe, for it kept open a wound which might have been healed either by a return of the lost provinces, with or without compensation, or by granting them autonomy, or, better still, by leaving it to the inhabitants to choose for themselves, as France did with Nice and Savoy.

The ruthless methods of a Bismarck are no longer of this age.  They are too odious, and the human conscience revolts at them.  What a preposterous idea, in this twentieth century, to compel by force millions of people to renounce their traditions and even their language!  If Great Britain had followed the same method in dealing with the French Canadians, instead of loyal subjects she would have made rebels of them all.

It is neither right nor just nor truthful to say that Germany has done her best during the last four decades to heal the wounds struck by her to French national pride.  On the contrary, Germany’s attitude has been all along one of studied provocation; and if the instances already mentioned are not sufficient, many others could be added.

Germany abetted French colonial expansion.  Well, by what right should she have opposed it?  And if she yielded to France in Morocco, it was only after France had given Germany part of her African possessions rather than go to war with her.

It will be news to the world to be informed that there can be no reasonable doubt that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been gradually settling down to willing co-operation with the German administration.  Certainly such a statement is in violent contradiction with all we hear and read and know of the state of mind, the feelings, and aspirations of the inhabitants of those two provinces.