remain."

The affection of France kept pace always with the profession of democratic and republican ideals. When the prince-president came to Strasbourg in 1850, he was received in all the villages of Alsace with shouts of Vive la République! The municipal council of Strasbourg had refused to give any funds for his reception. At Strasbourg and at Mulhouse the National Guard was dismissed by the government. The Colonel of the Strasbourg Legion said in his farewell address: "It is true that at times you express with great vigour republican sentiments, but this is with you an original sin, and I fear me that the remedy applied will not be effectual in its correction."

During the Second Empire, Alsace was a hotbed of republican resistance, particularly in the Upper Rhine. However, at this time, the country again enjoyed a great prosperity. The military career continued to attract the Alsatians. The great advantages assured to the reinlisted soldiers induced many of them to enter the army as volunteers. The wars in Algeria under Louis Philippe had already shown, among the combatants, a great number of Alsatians. The intellectual culture of the provinces turned towards France and made great progress. Erckmann and Chatrian expressed marvellously well the aspirations and democratic ideals of the people in magnifying the rôles of the Alsatians and the Lorrainers in the heroic period of the Revolution and the First Empire.

The peoples of Alsace and Lorraine were, like those of the rest of France, divided into political parties, and one often saw disagreements, generally legal, with the ideas of the respective governments. But no one ever evinced the slightest regret at no longer belonging to the Holy Empire, or the least desire to re-enter the bosom of Germany. When the War of 1870 broke out, Alsace and Lorraine were very French, and during that war the people of both provinces bravely and patriotically did their duty to France. The people were thus badly prepared for a change of nationality, and far from looking on their new Teuton compatriots as brothers, they cordially detested the Germans who during the war had conducted themselves to the limit of savagery. The forced community of life with the Germans soon showed an irreconcilable opposition between the native and the immigrant population.

Alsace-Lorraine could live whole centuries with the Germans without becoming germanized, whereas two centuries of life in common with France, freely consented to, had proved sufficient to make them Frenchmen. This spontaneous fusion could never have been possible if Alsace-Lorraine and France had not always had the same ideals of civilization. The Alsatian and the Lorrainer leaned always toward French culture, and from the moment they were politically separated from the Holy Empire they had nothing more in common with German Kultur.

The Alsatian-Lorrainer, who from the point of view of character greatly resembles the free citizen of America, is a very practical man. He willingly makes use of all the opportunities in life to improve his economic condition, but joined to these qualities is a deeply rooted idealism which will make any sacrifice to secure his independence, and to assure for him the dignity of freedom. He has brilliant military qualities, but he will never be a militarist. He will fight bravely for the defence of a just cause about which he is enthusiastic, because it means the fulfilment of a sacred duty. But he will never be willing to remain under the dominion of a power like that of Prussia and be forced to carry arms for causes that he detests and disdains. The Alsatian-Lorrainer has no affection for dynasty, he is absolutely wanting in respect for the hierarchy; he has a feeling for order and equality before the law, he is loyal and respectful to authority but exempt from all servitude. The German, on the contrary, with his class feeling, abasing himself, as it were, in platitudes before his superiors, hard and arrogant toward his inferiors, in admiration before the Angestammtes Herrscherhaus (traditional dynasty), accustomed to march under the lash, without any idealism, finding in the distribution of the booty of war a compensation for all humiliations,—such a man does not understand that the Alsatian-Lorrainer does not rejoice to find himself belonging to a nation of the elect, a nation that has the most formidable war machine to crush, from time to time according to its whim, any growth of material prosperity effected by free competition in the economic struggle.

Alsace-Lorraine is impervious to those ideas. Against her will, she was torn from France and she wishes to return. It is this which makes clear her history from 1871 to this day.

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THE PROTEST

As soon as it was a question of the necessity of giving up a part of the territory, all the deputies of the threatened departments signed a declaration, February 17, 1871, which, among other passages, contained the following: "Alsace and Lorraine do not wish to be alienated. Associated for more than two centuries with France, both in good and bad fortune, these two provinces, exposed without intermission to the blows of the enemy, have constantly sacrificed themselves for the greatness of the nation; they have sealed with their blood the insoluble compact which binds them to France. Made doubtful by the claims of the enemy, they assert, through all the obstacles and all the dangers under the yoke even of the invader, their unshaken fidelity. Unanimously the citizens in their homes, the soldiers who rallied beneath the flag, those who voted and those who fought, all signified to Germany and to the world the immutable will of Alsace and of Lorraine to remain French."

March 1, 1871, the same deputies signed a new protest which they deposited at the bureau of the National Assembly in which we find the following announcement: "We declare once more null and void a pact which disposes of us without our consent. The claim to our rights always remains open to each and to all in the form and the measure that our conscience dictates to us."

When the Alsatians were permitted by Germany to send deputies to the Reichstag, the fifteen who were elected protested on their side against annexation February 18, 1874. We find in their declaration the following passage: "In choosing us all, just as we are, our electors before everything else wish to affirm their sympathy with France and their right to govern themselves." These solemn declarations have never been revoked by any equivalent or contrary statement. Not even during the actual war and reign of terror established in the annexed provinces has the German Government succeeded in forcing from the representatives of Alsace-Lorraine a statement expressing the desire to remain German. The attempt to make such a manifestation by the votes of the council-generals, of whom the suspected members had previously been deported to Germany, saying that the economic interest of Alsace-Lorraine necessitated the maintenance of the status quo, only served to demonstrate the insecurity of the political situation of the German Empire in Alsace-Lorraine. What lamentable drivel in comparison to the dignified and generous language of the magnificent protests of Bordeaux. It accords well with the philosophy of German diction which the Baron de Bulach, Secretary of State, jeeringly dared recommend to his compatriots as a line of conduct: "Wess Brod ich ess des Lied ich sing" (Whose bread I eat, his song I sing).

Nothing,