clubs have always been closed to the immigrant. On the National Fête, July 14th, the Alsatians will cross the frontier by tens of thousands to partake communion under the religion of their own land and with their brothers of France. They return with the tri-colour ribbon in their buttonholes, and this creates each year a number of unpleasant incidents. In vain Germany wished to change the appearance of things by trying to win the masses, by means of a lower chamber elected by general suffrage. We have shown the factitious value of this concession, which as a consequence only increased opposition. The affair of Grafenstaden, and the trouble at Saverne caused by the attempt to cover up the exactions of a young lieutenant, brought indignation to a climax. The military authorities arrested haphazard the civilian natives and even the German immigrants, instituting in the midst of peace, a military dictatorship and aroused the irreconcilable antagonism between the German mentality and that of Alsace-Lorraine. After some slight attempts of independence on the part of the Alsace-Lorraine government and the Reichstag vis-à-vis the military, the whole German world fell upon the obstinate and hard-headed Alsatians who, according to them, were the cause of all the trouble because they refused to admire the beauty of the German Kultur. The Saverne affair resulted in the dismissal of the government of Alsace-Lorraine which had among its officials two won-over Alsatians, and the replacing this by a group of Prussians of rank.

The Minister of War, General von Falkenhayn, announced to the Reichstag: "We want to uproot from the people's mind the feeling that has been manifested up to this time and which has provoked the Saverne incident." And this feeling is none other than the French democratic, republican spirit of the Alsatians, incompatible with Prussian militarism.

On the same occasion, Deputy von Calker, unfortunate candidate from Strasbourg, but elected in a Prussian district, and an exceptionally friendly immigrant, confessed in the following fashion the defeat of Germanization in Alsace-Lorraine, shouting aloud in the Reichstag: "I cry out in anguish. For sixteen years I have worked to wipe out misunderstanding and to reconcile the natives and the immigrants, and now we have arrived at the point where we can say, It all again amounts to nothing (Kaput)." The conservatives very wisely answered this undeceived elector that if it was merely the Saverne incident that had caused this failure, it was evident that the desired harmony had rested on a very slender foundation.

Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg was conscious of the great mistake that had been made in annexing Alsace-Lorraine and had a foreboding of the coming loss of the Reichsland. He thus expresses himself in a letter written June 21, 1903, to Professor Lamprecht at Leipzig: "We are a young nation; we have yet perhaps too much naïve faith in force, we make too little importance of subtle measures, and we do not understand that those who are conquered by force cannot be kept by force alone."

The prefect of police at Berlin, von Jagow, declared in January, 1914, in relation to the Saverne affair: "The Germans in Alsace are in an enemy country." And during this war more than one German general has said to his troops at the time of marching into Alsace-Lorraine: "Now we will march into the enemy country."

It is easy to imagine what has been the fate of the country since the opening of hostilities. It is the reign of terror. In the first place persons inscribed on the black list, that is to say, those most suspected, have been arrested and imprisoned. Those, who like the author, have succeeded in escaping the talons of the Germans, have been the objects of prosecution for so-called high treason, liable to capital punishment. They have had their property seized and—supreme misfortune—they have been declared to have forfeited their German nationality. The future only will tell us the fate of those who were captured. The suspects not on the list and the families of the imprisoned were by thousands deported into Germany. The Council of War was in permanent operation. It gave sentences of thousands of years of imprisonment with hard labour against Alsatians guilty of the slightest anti-German manifestation or for the simplest token of sympathy given the French prisoners or the wounded. All classes of society fill the prisons. The penalties imposed on persons having committed the crime of speaking French have been so numerous that a facetious jailor said to a lady, who with tears in her eyes appeared at the prison door: "Do not weep, Madam, you will be in good society here, for this is the only spot where one still speaks French." The summary executions can no longer be counted. Only the crimes committed by the Germans in Belgium can surpass the horrors practised in Alsace-Lorraine.

The French sentiment showed its greatest strength in the wholesale desertion of the Alsatians to take service in the French army; and also by the fact that the Alsace-Lorrainers, made prisoners of war by the French, have asked to be enrolled in the French army. Many of the Alsatians, who had the chance to go to the colonies so as not to run the risk of being shot as "traitors" in case of being captured by the Germans, have begged to be sent to the front to fight the Germans, thus risking their lives twice in the service of France. I think I am understating the truth in estimating at 30,000, the number of Alsatians who were mobilized in the German forces and who have gone over to the ranks of the French army. The latter has always had a great attraction for the Alsatian, and whereas the number of Alsatians serving as officers in the German army does not amount to a dozen, of whom only one is a brigadier-general, the French army has thousands of Alsatian officers among whom are hundreds of generals. It is the same thing among the civilians. Many office-holders of all grades are of Alsatian origin, whereas the Alsatian who has accepted an office or looked for any general position in Germany is exceptional. Wherever the French troops have been able to penetrate into Alsace-Lorraine, they have been received with enthusiasm, and when they were obliged to retreat many people followed them into France in order to escape the reprisals which were waiting for them.

With the press muzzled and the severe censorship of letters, it will be only after the war that we shall have exact knowledge of what Alsace-Lorraine has passed through during this dreadful period. But what we are certain of at present is that the attitude of the people is the same now as in the past. The Alsatians, faithful in their devotion to France, await with a patriotic impatience, but with an unshaken faith in the victory of their holy cause, their deliverance from the German yoke.

Deputy Preiss, already quoted, was able to say to the Reichstag, June 30, 1896: "The assimilation, the germanization has not taken a single step forward.... It is terror that governs and poisons our political life. The government does not understand the people and the people do not understand the government.... History will say, The German Empire was able to conquer Alsace-Lorraine materially, but was not able to conquer her morally; she has not known how to win the heart and the soul of the people."

Is it not like a paraphrase of the celebrated verse so often sung all through the country:

"Vous n'aurez pas l'Alsace et la Lorraine
Et malgré vous nous resterons Français!
Vous avez pu