g as
France held Strasburg, and a French army supported on the strong basis
of the Vosges could use Strasburg as a gate whence to sally forth into
Germany. No one indeed who has ever stood on the slopes of the Black
Forest and looked across the magnificent valley, sheltered by the hills
on either side, through which the Rhine flows, can doubt that this is
all one country, and that the frontier must be sought, not in the river,
which is not a separation, but the chief means of communication, but on
the top of the hills on the further side. Every argument, however, which
is used to support German claims to Strasburg may be used with equal
force to support French claims to Metz. If Strasburg in French hands is
the gate of Germany, Metz in German hands is, and always will remain, a
military post on the soil of France. No one who reads Bismarck's
arguments on this point can fail to notice how they are all nearly
conclusive as to Strasburg, but that he scarcely takes the trouble to
make it even appear as though they applied to Metz. Even in the speech
before the Reichstag in which he explains and justifies the terms of
peace, he speaks again and again of Strasburg but hardly a word of Metz.
He told how fourteen years before, the old King of Wuertemberg had said
to him, at the time of the Crimean troubles, that Prussia might count on
his voice in the Diet as against the Western Powers, but only till war
broke out.

"Then the matter takes another form. I am determined as well as
any other to maintain the engagements I have entered into. But do
not judge me unjustly; give us Strasburg and we shall be ready
for all eventualities, but so long as Strasburg is a sally-port
for a Power which is always armed, I must fear that my country
will be overrun by foreign troops before my confederates can come
to my help."

The King was right; Germany would never be secure so long as Strasburg
was French; but can France ever be secure so long as Metz is German?

The demand for Metz was based purely on military considerations; it was
supported on the theory, which we have already learnt, that Germany
could never take the offensive in a war with France, and that the
possession of Metz would make it impossible, as indeed is the case, for
France to attack Germany. It was not, however, Bismarck's practice to
subordinate political considerations to military. It may be said that
France would never acquiesce in the loss of either prov