transition between its independence and its reunion with France, which took place in 1766. This reunion was accepted with such warmth that twenty-six years later, when the Emperor of Germany, grandson of the Duke Francis the Third, declared war against France, the whole of Lorraine rose in a body against the invader. III-ALSACE BEFORE ITS REUNION WITH FRANCE

Alsace was, in the Middle Ages, even more cut up into insignificant fragments than was Lorraine. At the beginning of the seventeenth century it was still composed of a great number of lay and ecclesiastical properties; ten "free" towns which leagued themselves against these properties formed what was called the "Décapole"; Strasburg was a republic which possessed a considerable rural domination; Mulhausen, allied to the Swiss Protestant cantons, was nothing but a foreign slave to Alsace. These different States constantly made war one against the other. To all the causes of dissension the reform in the sixteenth century added yet another of which the effects profoundly affected the country; two camps were formed, that of the Protestants and that of the Catholics.

In 1618 there came war, which was destined to last thirty years. Alsace suffered greatly from this crisis, which shook the whole of Europe. The cause was the ambition of the Emperor of Germany, who wished to destroy liberty of conscience in his empire and also the freedom which the different States had long enjoyed. He was closely allied to the King of Spain, his cousin, like himself an enemy of liberty of conscience and of every other liberty. In Alsace the Protestants, in order to defend themselves, appealed to France; they invited our King, Louis the Thir

teenth, to occupy their fortified towns, and this was done in 1633 and 1634. The Catholics, to protect themselves against the Swiss Protestants, who were fighting in Alsace and committing every kind of excess, opened their towns to French troops. The French, summoned by the Alsatians, thus occupied almost the entire country. In 1635 France entered into a war against the King of Spain and the Emperor, and was victorious. Peace was signed at Münster in 1648, and the French possession of Alsace was recognized in "compensation" for the help that she had given during thirteen years of war to the enemies of the King of Spain and the Emperor.

Thus after a long separation AlsaceLorraine became reunited under the rule of France. From now onwards their destiny is a common one in both good and bad days.

We should have liked to describe French rule in these provinces at some length, but we have promised to be brief; we will only state what is essential, speaking more particularly of Alsace. The question is, besides, more interesting to study in Alsace than in Lorraine; Alsace was more complex; the difference of manners and customs greater between France and Alsace than between France and Lorraine. The task of French administration was thus more difficult in Alsace. For the rest, her principles and her conduct were the same in both provinces. They had an equal success the profound and intimate union of the two provinces in the common patrie.

IV-ALSACE UNDER FRENCH RULE.

The clauses in the Treaty of Münster relative to Alsace were obscure on more than one point, and France did not delay in obtaining the fullest advantage from these. She stretched her sovereignty over the entire prov

ince; on September 30th, 1681, she occupied the town of Strasbourg; the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 recognized her right to the possession of the whole of Alsace, and from this time the Rhine marked the frontier between Alsace and Germany. The town of Mulhausen alone continued to acknowledge Switzerland.

France made great effort to win the Alsatian population and to make a moral conquest of the province. The old political framework was preserved; the different Alsatian States continued to exist until the Revolution under the authority of their nobles. The ancient constitutions of the towns were respected; Strasbourg remained a little republic, freely nominating its magistrates. The inhabitants were allowed to keep their customs and habits and their dialect; German was taught in the schools as in the past; the French Government did not dream of imposing the French language. The change of rule was scarcely noticeable.

However, above all these small States the sovereignty of France was felt, and France was careful to take in hand the general interests of the province which Germany had neglected. She restored the ruins which had accumulated during the Thirty Years' War; she repopulated the country in opening it to colonists; she patronized agriculture; she exploited the fine forests of the Vosges to build vessels for the royal navy; she authorized the creation of manufactures, and in the eighteenth century industry developed enormously. New roads were made, canals were built and commerce became very active. The province became rich and the population increased threefold. Such was the work of the French governors who administered the province admirably.

A High Court of Justice, the "Conseil Supérieur," was established to

judge on appeal those cases carried in the first instance before the judges of the towns and country districts, and this Court dispensed an enlightened law; it received the petitions of the poor, even those directed against their nobles; and it gave a verdict for the humble, when the humble were in the right.

Thus in Alsace, before the reunion with France, existed chaos, insubordination, private interests warring one against the other, and paralyzed industrial forces; after the reunion, order was established without violence, vested interests disappeared before a general power which imposed justice and prosperity.

It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that France, in amalgamating the various elements that she found and in adding the influence of her own genius, had created that political body known as Alsace.

The influence of this genius became very powerful in the eighteenth century. The Alsatian had become a Frenchman, loved the charm of all that came from France, and had adopted those ideas which paved the way for the French Revolutionthose ideas of the rights of man, the rights of the people, liberty, equality, and fraternity.

In no part of France was the Revolution more warmly welcomed than in Alsace. One of its first acts was of considerable benefit to the province: feudal rights were abolished by the National Assembly during the celebrated night of August 4th, 1789. These rights weighed heavily on the Alsatians in the countless "seigneuries" which had existed under French rule, and thus the last trace of the servitude of ancient times disappeared.

A sentiment of joy and pride broke out in a symbolical act of noble character. On June 13th, 1790, at one of the first fêtes which paved the way for

the great fête of the National Federation, a tricolor flag was placed not far from Strasbourg, facing Germany; it bore on it this glorious inscription: "Here commences the Land of Liberty." Without doubt it was pure chance that the first rendering of the "Marseillaise" was given by Rouget de l'Isle before the Mayor of Strasbourg on April 26th, 1792; but Alsace merited the honor of being the first to hear the song of free peoples for the enthusiasm with which she had welcomed the new ideas.

During the revolutionary period, in 1798, Alsace became complete, having retrieved Mulhausen.

The union of Mulhausen with Alsace and France was solicited by the inhabitants of Mulhausen as an honor. The representatives of the town and a French commissary arranged the text of a treaty which was ratified by the bourgeoisie of Mulhausen, then by the two French Houses of Parliament of that time, the Conseil des CinqCent and the Conseil des Anciens; the following are the opening words:"The Republic of France accords the wish of the citizens of Mulhausen."

On March 15th, 1798, the French authorities presented themselves at the gates of the town; from the interior an official cried out: "Wer da?" (Who is there?). The reply was: "The French Republicans." The rest of the dialogue was carried on in French.

The group of Frenchmen entered; a long cortège formed up; at the four corners of the town trees of liberty were planted; in the square a ditch was dug, and, before planting in it the fifth tree, the insignia of the past was buried-arms of the town, statutes, corporation banners. As for the flag of Mulhausen, it was enveloped in a tricolor flag which bore this inscription:

"The Republic of Mulhausen reposes in the bosom of the Republic of France."

This act of the reunion of Mulhausen, SO honorable for France, has no parallel in history.

It is common knowledge that Alsace gave a great number of officers and soldiers to the wars of the Revolution, amongst whom Kléber, of Strasbourg, stands in the first rank. In these wars the union of Alsace and France was sealed in blood and glory. And at the same time the Revolution completed the destruction of the monarchy in that part of the province which had become departments of the HautRhin and Bas-Rhin. Alsace found herself completely transformed: a common law had replaced archaic customs; an even justice all that "justice" which as often as not was merely an exploitation of small tyrannies; all citizens were equal and none was privileged; no longer were Protestants and Catholics warring one against the other, but liberty of conscience prevailed. And, lastly, every liberty.

Truly is Alsace a creation of France. Alsace has been grateful; and she has shown it by her faithful love for the "patrie." She has served valiantly in the Imperial armies; numerous are the names of Alsatian generals inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe. When in 1814 and 1815 the Germans invaded our two departments of the Rhine they were amazed to find in them such a solid attachment for

France; their poets had treated the Alsatians as "degenerate brothers."

The Germans failed to understand this renunciation of the honor of belonging to them by ties of blood and this want of duty in failing to love them on the part of the Alsatians. On every possible occasion they sought to recall the Alsatians to their duty. One day, at one of those fêtes which in time of peace brought natives from the other side of the Rhine as visitors to Strasbourg, a burgomaster, one of those numerous Germans who practise to perfection the art of "putting their foot in it," proposed the following toast: "I drink to Alsace, the daughter of Germany." The Mayor of Strasbourg explained: "I do not know if Alsace is the daughter of Germany; but I do know that she is the wife of France and gives, and will always give, her her children."

During the nineteenth century several political régimes succeeded each other in France. Alsace, by the choice of its deputies in the House, gave witness to her liberal and democratic tendencies. She acclaimed the revolution of 1848; that same year she celebrated with immense enthusiasm the second centenary of her union with France. She thanked "the destiny which, for the last two centuries, had given her so beautiful and so noble a country."

It can conscientiously be affirmed before God and before man that no part of France was more profoundly French than Alsace-Lorraine at the moment of the war of 1870. Patriot

ism was keener there than anywhere else on the frontier. Alsatians and Lorrainers knew that they were the bulwarks of France.

V-THE ANNEXATION OF ALSACE

LORRAINE BY GERMANY.

In July, 1870, it was known in Paris that a Prussian prince had accepted

the Spanish crown. Feeling ran strong throughout France. Negotiations took place between the two Governments, during the course of which Bismarck at Ems dispatched a lying and insulting telegram. War broke out and was for us, ill-prepared as we were, a succession of misfortunes.

In January, 1871, France, conquered, was obliged to conclude an armistice. The enemy made his conditions known; the most terrible was the surrender of Alsace-Lorraine. The two provinces were occupied by the conqueror when the constituencies of Alsace and Lorraine elected their deputies to the Assemblée Nationale which was about to meet at Bordeaux. To these deputies the electors from the departments of Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin, and the Moselle gave a mandate to protest against any annexation by Germany, and that their unanimous will was to remain French. At the first sitting of the Assemblée Nationale, on February 17th, 1871, they issued the following mandate:

We take our co-citizens of France, the governments and the peoples of the entire world, as witness that we regard in advance as null and void all acts and treaties, votes and plebiscites, which would consent to abandon to a foreign country the whole or any part of our provinces of Alsace and of Lorraine.

We proclaim the forever inviolable right of the Alsatians and Lorrainers to remain members of the French nation, and we swear. for ourselves as well as for our constituents, our children and their descendants to vindicate it eternally and by every means, towards and against all

usurpers.

But France could no longer continue the struggle. On March 1st the Assemblée voted the preliminaries of peace. The deputation from AlsaceLorraine then read a magnificent and heart-rending protest:

We declare once more to be null and void any treaty which disposes of us without our consent.

The vindication of our rights remains forever open to all and each one in the form and degree that our conscience shall dictate to us.

At the moment of quitting these precincts where our dignity no longer permits us to sit, and in spite of the bitterness of our pain, the supreme thought in our hearts is a thought of gratitude for those who, during six months, have never ceased to defend us, and of an unchanging attachment to the country from which we are so violently torn.

We shall follow you in our thoughts, and we look forward with confidence to the future, when a regenerated France once more takes up the course of her great destiny.

Your brothers of Alsace and Lorraine, separated at this moment from the common family, will conserve for France, absent from their homes, a filial affection until that day when they will come and once more take their places there.

VI-ALSACE-LORRAINE AFTER

ANNEXATION.

It is remarkable that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have never blamed France when she was forced to abandon them; they have, on the contrary, thanked her for having defended them "during six months." They understood that they were the ransom of peace, the inevitable consequence of our defeat. All their resentment is against Germany, who insulted their ordinary human dignity. During the half-century that they lived under the yoke they never ceased to protest against their trampled rights. In the Reichstag in 1874 their deputies have unanimously declared:

Germany has exceeded her rights as a civilized nation in forcing a conquered France to sacrifice a million and a half of her children. In the name of the people of Alsace and Lor

raine, sold by the Treaty of Frankfort, we protest against the abuse of force of which we are the victims.

In 1887 the protest was renewed.

The Reichstag had no cure for these sentiments. It sneered on hearing people talk of their rights, for Germany today recognizes no right but that of force.

Alsace-Lorraine was not even put on an equal footing with other German States; it was made a "Reichsland," that is to say, a province of the Empire, the collective property of other States. Bismarck wished to interest the whole of Germany in the conservation of the conquest. A conquest that the fear of the resentment of France would appear to place in jeopardy would be an efficacious means to hold united the different parts of the new Empire. To this political interest he sacrificed dignity and the liberty of fifteen hundred thousand souls.

The

Alsace-Lorraine from 1871 to 1892 was under the régime of a dictatorship. No vexation was spared her. All traces of France were banished. French language was forbidden in the primary schools, on advertisements, on signboards, and, by an odious refinement of cruelty, on tombs. The inhabitants were watched by the police; an inquisition was established in each home; unhappy were those who manifested in their conversation any sympathy for their former country. One German Governor alone, Baron de Manteuffel attempted to win the population by kindness; but all the officials from beyond the Rhine rose against him, fought his system, and crushed it. On January 1st, 1888, Alsace-Lorraine was subjected to the odious régime of passports as a punishment for the protest elections of 1887. The frontier on the French side was completely closed; no one could cross it without presenting a passport viséd by the German Ambassador in Paris,