On changerait plutot le coeur de place
Que de changer la vieille Alsace.
1
The greatest evil in our age is war. The most menacing feature of this evil is readiness for war, which makes of peace a perennial farce, and the most widespread factor which makes for war is that form of patriotism which spends itself in distrust and hatred of other nations. It rests on the mediaeval politics which found in war outside, the easiest road to national unity and the surest method of suppression of internal reforms.
Through no fault of their own it has been the fate of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, for the last forty years, to be the centre on which this type of patriotism has impinged. This has made these provinces the crux of the war problems of Europe. Around the mourning figure of Strassburg, symbolic of the distressed province of Alsace, the war-hatreds of France have rallied for forty years. The France which seemed to be menaced with dissolution in 1871 was again, in a fashion, unified by the fear and hatred which the fate of Alsace-Lorraine still inspires. The call of' la Patrie Mutilee' has become again, since Agadir, the occasion if not the justification of that contradiction in world-politics, a 'republic in arms.'
On the other hand, the fate of Alsace-Lorraine has served Bismarck's purpose of unifying Germany through her hatred of surrounding nations. The result of the seizure of these provinces, and of the distrust this policy has inspired, has held Germany together and made possible a scale of military expenditure which has appalled the world. It has hung as a dead weight on all German progress, internal and external. It has turned over the nation to the control of a blind militarism which rides gloriously toward a fall. The treaty of Frankfort was not a treaty of peace. It was devised to keep hatred alive. Its purpose was not to welcome back the Germanic people of Alsace, but to keep Germany unified against France. And thus the question of Alsace-Lorraine has divided Europe into two hopeless alliances, which can accomplish no worthy result, and for whose senseless antagonism there seems to be no rational remedy.
'Thus,' observes Mr. William Martin, 'amid all her griefs, it is the glorious role of Alsace-Lorraine to safeguard the moral unity of two great nations, concentrated on the same thought.'
Yet all this is through no fault of Alsace and Lorraine; they have given no occasion for war. Their part has been passive. Of that form of patriotism which spends itself in war talk and war accessories, these provinces are today in no sense the cause, they are only the excuse or the occasion. France can do nothing for them, and Germany in her present temper will do nothing.
Germany says to her province of Elsass-Lothringen,'I will not give you freedom till I am sure of your love.' Alsace replies, 'I cannot love you till you set me free.' Lorraine replies, 'I am not of your family, I cannot understand your ways.' Then Germany says to France, 'We cannot be friends until you forget.' And France says, 'You will not let me forget and so I cannot.'
This is the vicious circle, which most good men in Alsace-Lorraine hope some time to break.
The people of these provinces, torn suddenly from France as a result of incidents in which they had no part, held by Germany avowedly not for their own sakes but as appendages of their two strong fortresses, have naturally passed through the gamut of feelings instinctive to peoples conquered in war. And these feelings were the more bitter because it was not the people who were conquered.
Through the open door of Strassburg and Metz, Germany had been more than a dozen times invaded and many times overrun by the marauding hosts of France. It was Bismarck's plan to close these doors, to hold the key of France and Germany in his hand, so that these irruptions should forever cease. At the treaty of Frankfort in 1871, France threw the provinces overboard to save herself from a worse fate. And ever since that time they have been a 'wound in the side' of the great Empire to which they are attached.