lebiscite had
been taken in the two provinces, the majority would have been found
desirous of remaining under German rule. This, no doubt, is partly
vanity, and springs from belief in the supposed preferability of German
civilization to French civilization--even French people who knew what
it was to live under a French as well as a German regime might prefer
the latter as more efficient and comfortable and up-to-date. But the
belief that a plebiscite would have gone in German favour is based even
more on the German population and on the strong business interests
which link the industrial part with the industrial whole. Alsace and
Lorraine through commercial development had become an exceedingly
important constituent of modern Germany before the war. Germany,
moreover, claims to have converted them from poor departments of France
to wealthy industrial communities.

Naturally no one on the Allied side of the peace-table ever dreamed of
considering such arguments. And they are so lacking in practical
cogency that they find no place in the current consideration of modern
Europe. They are useless arguments for a Germany who lost the war, and
they are assumed to be quite dead. Germany has enough trouble to save
Westphalia and Silesia and the Ruhr valley, let alone think about the
irrecoverables of the war. She might as well argue that the fleet she
sank at Scapa Flow should be restored to her as think of Alsace now.

Nevertheless, the arguments remain for another day to become the
arguments of pretension and justification. France naturally is taking
care that there shall never be another day of reckoning. But let
France make a mistake in her diplomacy and "get in wrong," as they say
in America, and it will all be fought over again. It was only fifty
years after the Franco-German war that this new war came. Who knows
what re-grouping of power there may be, or how Germany will stand in
1970!

In our reckonings and prognostications we should keep in mind that the
German is the centre body of the Teutonic race. He is down, but he is
not finally beaten. His mind is resentful, and indeed full of the
revenge instinct. He has not learned the lesson of humility and
obedience in the great war. Who has? He believes he is meant to be
master in the vast European plain which he has fitly named "Central
Europe--_Mittel Europa_," and identified with himself.

EXTRA LEAVES

(v) _On "Clay Sparrows" and the Failure