t with the Lord of battles. We have measured
with clear vision the responsibility which attaches, before God and
men, to him who drives two peace-loving peoples in the heart of Europe
to war. The German and the French people, enjoying in equal measure
the blessings of Christian morals and o growing prosperity, are meant
for a more wholesome contest than the bloody contest of war.

[Illustration: PRINCE BISMARCK FRANZ VON LENBACH]

The rulers of France, however, have known how to exploit by calculated
deception, the just, although excitable, pride of the great French
nation in furtherance of their own interests and for the gratification
of their own passions.

The more conscious the allied governments are of having done
everything permitted by their honor and their dignity to preserve for
Europe the blessings of peace, and the more apparent it is to
everybody that the sword has been forced upon us, the greater is the
confidence with which we rely on the unanimous decision of the German
governments of the South as well as of the North, and appeal to the
patriotism and self-sacrifice of the German people, calling them to
the defense of their honor and their independence.

We shall fight, as our fathers did, against the violence of foreign
conquerors, and for our freedom and our right. And in this fight, in
which we have no other aim than that of securing for Europe lasting
peace, God will be with us as He was with our fathers.

ALSACE-LORRAINE A GLACIS AGAINST FRANCE

May 2,1871

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND VON MACH, PH.D.

[After the war France had been obliged to return to Germany the two
provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, which she had attached to herself in
the times of Germany's weakness. It might have been better to unite
these provinces with one of the German states, but it was feared that
so valuable an increase in territory of one of the twenty-five states
that had just been federated in the empire, might lead to renewed
dissension. The suggestion, therefore, was made to administer the two
provinces, for the present, as common property, and to leave the final
arrangements to the future. A bill concerning the immediate
disposition of Alsace and Lorraine was submitted to the Reichstag on
May 2, 1871; when Prince Bismarck opened the discussion with the
following speech.]

In introducing the pending bill I shall have to say only a few words,
for the debate will offer me the opportunity of elucidating the
var