germaniser la plaine,
Mais notre cœur, vous ne l'aurez jamais!"

"Alsace-Lorraine ne'er will you own,
In spite of you, Frenchmen are we,
Others may serve with a curse and a groan,
But ever our hearts shall be free!"?

The situation has never changed. This is what one could read a short time before the war in a book of Professor Forster's of Munich in a study on the failure of German policy in the frontier provinces: "Alsace, a country of arch-German origin, forty years after her return to Germany, has still to an astonishing degree French sympathies, or at least it has no German sympathies. After more than forty years, we have not been able to re-Germanize this population."

Let us finish by another German testimony. This is how, from the Matin, July 18, 1917, the Kieler Zeitung expresses itself on the results of the germanization of Alsace-Lorraine: "The wise conservatives thought that thanks to the reunion under the established rule of the Empire, they could reconcile two provinces different from each other, and having in common only an arrogant defiance of the ambitions of the Empire."

This confidence was an ignominious mistake. Lorraine bound itself solidly and stubbornly to French congenial ideas, vigorously developed in her in a large measure by the mother tongue; while, as to Alsace, she was like the twig of a German bough strayed away from its ethnic tree and rotted to the core by French climate. They can be reclaimed neither by benevolence nor by force.

One understands why the German press and the German government are interested in the dismemberment of Alsace-Lorraine and their division between the Confederated States without thought of taking the opinion of the people. Such opinion counts for nothing with the rulers of the country, because the sentiments of the people are already well known. They are French and for that reason Alsace-Lorraine will, without the slightest difficulty, again become French. In an article of the Revue de Paris, January, 1914 ("The Sentiments of Alsace-Lorraine"), at a time when the question seemed to have only a theoretical interest, I attempted to make this clear.

That which the author of the article in the Kieler Zeitung, in his ill-tempered German hatred, calls "rottenness" is, I contend, the gentle radiance of the French spirit. It is the bloom of a civilization in which the savage adherent of Kultur recognizes a lasting antagonist.

Yes, Alsace-Lorraine has suffered under the Prussian rule of Germany. This rule has weakened the strength of the country but could not kill the spirit of its people. There is but one way in which the two provinces can regain their health. They must again be united to France, their mother country, their rightful home.

We depend upon America, strong and generous, to help to bring about this great result. It is America which will give the decisive aid required for the Allies in their great struggle to preserve against the barbarous assaults of German militarism, right, justice, and civilization.

THE END