tly and willfully kept alive the flame of
discord.

It surely cannot be said that the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine is a
vital necessity to France. Without Alsace-Lorraine France has recovered
her prosperity and her prestige in a manner that has been the admiration
of the world. It is a mere illusion to think that the reconquest of
Alsace-Lorraine would add to her glory. It would have been a demand of
patriotism for the intellectual class to combat this illusion. Instead
of this, every French writer, every French scholar, every French orator,
except the Socialists, year in and year out, has been dinning into the
popular ear the one word revenge.

France to Blame.

There can be little doubt that Prof. Gustave Lanson, the distinguished
literary historian, voiced the sentiments of the vast majority of his
countrymen when in a lecture, delivered some years ago at Harvard, he
stated that France could not and would not reorganize the peace of
Frankfurt as a final settlement, and that the one aim of the French
policy of the last forty years had been to force Germany to reopen the
Alsace-Lorraine question.

If there were people in Germany inclined to overlook or to minimize this
constantly growing menace from France, their eyes must have been opened
when in 1912 the French Government, having previously abolished the
one-year volunteers, raised the duration of active military service for
every Frenchman from two years to three, and, in addition to this,
called out in the Autumn of 1913 the recruits not only of the year whose
turn had come, namely, the recruits born in 1892, but also those born
in 1893. This was a measure nearly identical with mobilization; it was a
measure which clearly showed that France would not delay much longer
striking the deadly blow. For no nation could possibly stand for any
length of time this terrific strain of holding under the colors its
entire male population from the twentieth to the twenty-fourth year. No
wonder that the Paris papers were speaking as long ago as the Summer of
1912 of the regiments stationed in the Eastern Departments as the
"vanguard of our glorious army," and were advocating double pay for
them, as being practically in contact with the enemy.

The second foe now threatening the destruction of Germany is England.
Can it truly be said that England's hostility has been brought about by
German aggression? True, Germany has built a powerful navy; but so have
Japan, the Unite