forty-three years has been one of utmost
restraint and forbearance, and has been dictated by the one desire of
making her forget the loss of the two provinces, German until the
seventeenth century and inhabited by German stock, which were won back
from France in 1870. Whether the acquisition of these provinces was a
fortunate thing for Germany may be doubted. The possession of
Alsace-Lorraine has certainly robbed Germany of the undivided sympathy
of the world, which she otherwise would have had. But it is probably
true that from the military point of view Alsace-Lorraine was needed by
Germany as a bulwark against the repetition of the many wanton French
invasions from which Germany has had to suffer since the time of the
Thirty Years' War and the age of Louis XIV.

Sought to Heal the Breach.

However this may be, Germany has done her best during the last four
decades to heal the wounds struck by her to French national pride. She
abetted French colonial expansion in Cochin-China, Madagascar, Tunis.
She yielded to France her own well-founded claims to political influence
in Morocco. In Alsace-Lorraine itself she introduced an amount of local
self-government and home rule such as England has not accorded even now
to Ireland. While Ireland still is waiting for a Parliament at Dublin,
Strassburg has been for years the seat of the Alsace-Lorraine Diet, a
provincial Parliament based on universal suffrage. And even in spite of
the incessant and inflammatory French propaganda which last year led to
such unhappy counter-strokes as the deplorable Zabern affair, 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--an administration which insures them order, justice, and
prosperity. Nothing is a clearer indication of the peaceable trend which
affairs have lately taken in Alsace-Lorraine than the fact that the
Nationalists, i.e., French party, in the Strassburg Diet has never been
able to rise above insignificance, and that, on the other hand, a
considerable number of responsible officers in the civil administration,
including the highest Governmental positions, have been occupied by
native Alsatians.

While Germany has thus repeatedly shown her willingness and desire to
end the ancient feud, France has remained irreconcilable; and
particularly the intellectual class of France cannot escape the charge
that they have persisten