Art. 10.-ALSACE-LORRAINE. 1. Alsace-Lorraine. Unwin, 1918. By Coleman Phillipson. Fisher 2. The Question of Alsace-Lorraine. By Jules Duhem. (Translated from the French.) Hodder and Stoughton, 1918. 3. La France de l'Est. By P. Vidal de la Blache. Armand Colin, 1917. 4. L'Alsace au XVIIme Siècle. By R. Reuss. Émile Bouillon, 1897. AN amusing story was recently current of an American soldier, who, sleeping in the open air, was aroused at daybreak by a small French girl, who brought him a cup of the delicious coffee of which the French have the secret. Having drunk the coffee and rubbed his eyes, the soldier sat up and remarked: Well! If that little girl wants Alsace and Lorraine, she shall have them, if I have to stay here thirty years.' The feeling is a general one. The French have suffered so much and have displayed such superb qualities that the instinct of their Allies is to see that they receive at the peace everything that they demand; and, next to the rehabilitation of Belgium, the restoration to France of her 'lost provinces is undoubtedly the most popular of the Allied WarAims. Yet, right and natural as these instincts are, it behoves us to examine the problem of Alsace-Lorraine with all the detachment of which we are capable, lest, in the desire to be generous, to right the wrong done in 1871, we commit, or sanction the commission of, a second wrong, for which future generations will have to pay the penalty. The question, therefore, that we have to ask is not whether France wants Alsace-Lorraine, or whether we want France to have Alsace-Lorraine, but whether she has a just claim to these provinces. Are they integral parts of France or of Germany? or have they, during the ordeal of the past forty-seven years, become a separate entity, leaning neither towards Germany nor towards France, but ripe for an independent existence? This question involves another and more general one: What is the test of common nationality? Arguments based on race, language, and geography have been freely used; and, although none of these can be said to be a true and final test, they require examination. That race is no satisfactory test is proved by many considerations. Few nations are of more varied raceextraction than our own; and Spain and Portugal, Belgium, and Switzerland are other instances of the weakness of arguments based on race affinity. It may, however, be worth while to point out that the Gallic race extended to the Rhine, and that, in spite of the barbarian invasions, Celtic blood has persisted in Alsace and predominated in Lorraine. Regarded from the point of view of language, it must be recognised that Alsace has always been Germanspeaking; it was so in 1871 by a majority of rather more than 3 to 1 (77 per cent. to 23 per cent.). But at the moment of the German annexation the majority of Lorrainers in the transferred territory were Frenchspeakers; and in the last census (1910) 33 per cent. of native Lorrainers of the annexed portion of Lorraine were still recorded as habitually talking French. In Lower and Upper Alsace the percentages of Frenchspeakers in 1910 were 38 per cent. and 61 per cent. respectively. The city of Metz, formerly French-speaking by a large majority, is now almost equally divided. But in recent years the tendency has been for the Frenchspeakers to increase a very suggestive fact. The language question, however, has little significance. The fact that a German patois is generally spoken in Alsace does not indicate sympathy with Germany. In the purely German-speaking districts of Haguenau, Weissenburg, and Schlettstadt, for instance, the proportion of those who opted for French nationality in 1871 was higher than in any other district of the two provinces. As to questions of geography it may suffice to say that, while the Vosges frontier has proved itself impenetrable, there is a good deal to be said for the Rhine; and that, while many people have been ready to point out the dangers of the salient into Germany that would be formed by Alsace-Lorraine, there are some counterbalancing advantages. But race, language, and geographical position, although they are contributory elements, are not the determining factors in the test of nationality. That test has to be sought on the more doubtful ground of popular sentiment. It is a matter for observation and psychology rather than for reasoning and statistics. If we ask where we are to look for evidences of the desires of a people, how we are to test their hearts rather than their speech and the shape of their skulls, the usual and most natural answer--and it is the one that has been generally used by the Socialists in regard to Alsace-Lorraine-is by the application of the plebiscite; and the fact that France has rejected the idea of a plebiscite in AlsaceLorraine has roused some not unnatural suspicion. It must be remembered, however, that the expedient of a plebiscite on such a subject as the disposal of disputed territory has been proved in practice to be beset with difficulties. The standard examples are the plebiscites in 1860 in Nice and Savoy; and a study of the conditions under which they were taken does not encourage a general recourse to this expedient. A plebiscite, it has been found, is generally favourable to existing powers. It is open to great abuses, owing to the fact that it must usually be conducted under the supervision of one of the interested parties. Moreover, in Alsace-Lorraine there are special difficulties. Out of a population of less than two millions about 400,000 have emigrated since 1871; and practically all of these would be favourable to France. These persons and their descendants have as much right to vote as any residents, and far more than the 300,000 German immigrants who have replaced them. But the difficulty in tracing them and verifying their claims would be almost insuperable. As to the German immigrants, the fact that a German Colonisation Society has been busy during 1918 settling approved Pan-Germans, selected by German General Head Quarters at Strassburg, on the lands of refugees, points to the conclusion that, by the use of the immigrant vote, and a plebiscite conducted under German auspices, the Germans quite recently hoped to snatch a majority in the provinces. In addition to these technical arguments against a plebiscite, the French have laid much stress on the moral argument that the Treaty of Frankfort was a breach of a recognised international principle, that the answer of Alsace-Lorraine was given once for all in the famous protest of the Deputies of the Provinces in the Assembly at Bordeaux, and that to use the words of M. Pichona plebiscite would imply that it was an open question whether an injustice had been done in 1871, or not. The force of this argument is undeniable. If, then, the expedient of a plebiscite is open to grave objections, the only alternative is to search for evidence of national feeling in the past, and for expressions of popular feeling in the present. As Renan says, in an eloquent passage: To possess common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together; to desire to do more-on these things is founded the essential desire for a common national existence.' If we can satisfy ourselves by historical evidence that, during the period of union with France, a real contact was established; that there were common glories, sufferings, and aspirations; further, that at the moment of severance there remained a desire for continued national existence; finally, that after forty-seven years of separation that desire still persists, we shall be furnished with a true justification for an act of reparation. Alsace-Lorraine-the territory known since 1871 as Elsass-Lothringen, or the Reichsland-was annexed to France by three separate operations-in 1552, 1648, and 1766. It includes three distinct sets of territories: (1) part of the homogeneous Duchy of Lorraine and Bar, (2) the territory known as Alsace, and (3) Metz and the Messin, which, with Toul and Verdun, formed the territory known as the 'Three Bishoprics.' Of these the last was annexed first. Early in the 16th century France had embarked on the policy, so long and so profitably pursued, of giving support to the small Germanic States-mainly Protestant, and mainly on the Rhine-against the tyranny and bigotry of the Emperors, whose feudal vassals they were. As the protector or promoter of their independence, Henri II of France was invited by certain of these princes to make himself patron of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, as towns which were 'not of Germanic speech.' He occupied them in 1552, and France was confirmed in their possession by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. It is not possible to suggest that, in making this addition to her territories, France was actuated by altruistic motives. The places ceded were vital to the security of her eastern frontier; and she acquired them without recourse to fraud or violence. The acquisition of Alsace was a much more intricate matter. That congeries of little principalities was by its diversity, and still more by the religious conditions which prevailed after the Reformation, peculiarly exposed to the depredations of the various armies which, on one. mission or another, but always at the expense of the countries through which they marched, made central Europe a battle-ground in the Thirty Years' War. The fact that through Alsace ran the principal line of communications between the imperial forces in Italy and those in the Spanish Netherlands gave her a further, and, to her, most undesirable, prominence. Her sufferings in this period were atrocious, and the memory of them is not yet effaced. In these conditions it was inevitable that Alsace should look to France and should desire the protection which inclusion in a great kingdom could alone afford. By the end of the Thirty Years' War France was firmly established in Alsace, and by the settlement of 1648 she was confirmed in her position, though the terms of the treaty were vague, and the exact nature of the French claims in Alsace was for some time obscure. In order to regularise them Louis XIV set up what were called Chambres de Réunion, whose duty it was to construe the obscure articles. The operations of these chambers were tacitly confirmed in the Treaty of Nymegen (1672), and definitely in the Treaty of Ryswick (1697), which, moreover, specifically included in the French dominions the city of Strassburg, occupied-with little justification, it must be confessedby Louis XIV in 1681. The only exception among the Alsatian towns was the city of Mülhausen, which had joined the Swiss Confederation, and which remained a Swiss enclave till 1798, when, by its own request, it was incorporated in France. The gradual process which had thus united Alsace to France was inevitable. It is probable that the inhabitants regretted their severance from Germany-by which at this time a social rather than a political tie is implied-and accepted the protection of France, with |