FOOTNOTES:

[8] Articles 109-114, with official map.

[9] Articles 380-386.

[10] Article 115.

[11] Articles 34-39, with official map.

[12] Articles 32, 33.

[13] Articles 40, 41.

[14] Article 361.

[15] Article 9, § 2.

III
ALSACE-LORRAINE

The fate of Alsace-Lorraine was, in general, a problem of the war rather than of the Peace Conference. Nothing had done more, in President Wilson’s phrase, “to unsettle the peace of the world for nearly fifty years”; nothing was more earnestly discussed throughout the World War; nothing was settled more simply and quickly once the war was over. The completeness of the Allied victory and the immediate evacuation of Alsace-Lorraine required by the terms of the armistice left no doubt of the return of the lost provinces to France. The Peace Conference had only to determine certain necessary details. “The territories which were ceded to Germany in accordance with the Preliminaries of Peace signed at Versailles on February 26, 1871, and the Treaty of Frankfort of May 10, 1871, are restored to French sovereignty as from the date of the Armistice of November 11, 1918.” So runs Article 51 of the treaty of Versailles, and the rest follows from that.

Nevertheless, no account of the territorial problems of the Peace Conference would be complete which did not treat the question of Alsace-Lorraine and its background, and treat it with sufficient fulness to give the proper perspective to this major issue of the war. Moreover, Alsace-Lorraine is the necessary basis for any consideration of the whole matter of the Franco-German frontier, with its specific issues of the Rhine, the Left Bank, and the Saar valley. Let us begin with a minimum of history and description, followed by a fuller analysis of the recent aspects of the problem.

Alsace-Lorraine (German Elsass-Lothringen) was an imperial territory (Reichsland) of the German empire formed in 1871 by the union of the two districts then taken from France. It had an area of 5600 square miles (Connecticut and Rhode Island 6000) and a population in 1910 of 1,874,000 (Connecticut and Rhode Island 1,657,000). On the east the Rhine separates it from the grand duchy of Baden; on the south it touches the Swiss frontier; on the north it was bounded by the Palatinate, Prussia, and the grand duchy of Luxemburg. The French frontier on the west was formed in the south by the summit of the Vosges and farther north by an artificial line of demarcation drawn in 1871.

Geographically considered, Alsace consists of the eastern slopes of the Vosges and the rich plain of the valley of the Rhine and its tributary the Ill, Lorraine of a plateau cut in the west by the Moselle. Alsace is a rich agricultural region, producing grain, potatoes, hay, tobacco, and wine; it has also important manufactures in its towns, cottons being a specialty of Mulhouse and other towns of Upper Alsace. Lorraine is less productive in agriculture but richer in mineral resources and the furnaces and iron mills which these support. Alsace has important oil wells at Pechelbronn, and one of the richest potash deposits in the world at Wittelsheim. Lorraine has important salt mines, and valuable coal fields lie on its border in the valley of the Saar; and on its western edge it shared with France the ‘minette’ iron field, the greatest iron deposit in Europe, from the German portion of which before the war came 74 per cent of all the iron mined in the German empire.

The people of Alsace and eastern Lorraine are preponderantly German-speaking; those of western Lorraine speak French. French is also much spoken in the towns of Alsace. 76 per cent of the whole population is Catholic, 22 per cent Protestant.

Alsace-Lorraine as a single political division was a creation of the German government in 1871; the two districts have different origins and a different history, indeed each of them is made up of parts with histories still further separate and distinct. All have in common the fact that they form part of a region which since the ninth century has been debated ground between Germany and France. In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries the territory which now forms Alsace and Lorraine was acquired bit by bit by France; in 1871 it was transferred in one lump to the new German empire.

In the later Middle Ages Lorraine formed a duchy, within which lay a number of small and in some cases independent feudal states and the city of Metz, a free city of the Holy Roman Empire whose people spoke French. In 1552, on the petition of certain German Protestant princes, Metz was placed under the protection of the king of France, who took possession of the city and the surrounding territory subject to it. In 1613 the bishopric of Metz and its lands were taken over by the French king, the whole being combined with Toul and Verdun into the province of the Three Bishoprics (Trois Evêchés), and the cession was confirmed by the Emperor in the treaty of Westphalia of 1648. Further acquisitions made in the seventeenth century, notably Sierck and Saarlouis, gave France a strategic line of communication through Lorraine to Alsace. The duchy of Lorraine, which had likewise been dependent on the Holy Roman Empire, was declared free by Emperor Charles V and was gradually drawn into the French sphere of influence. Relinquished by its Hapsburg duke in 1736, in 1738 by the treaty of Vienna it was handed over to a Polish duke, Stanislas Leszcynski, on condition that at his death it should pass to his son-in-law, Louis XV of France, by whom it was accordingly acquired in 1766. Certain small enclaves within Lorraine did not pass to France until the Revolution.

Alsace, except the city of Mulhouse, was annexed to France in the course of the reign of Louis XIV. The Middle Ages had broken the country up into a great variety of feudal states and free cities; the Reformation divided it still further by religious dissensions. In the Thirty Years’ War France intervened on the side of the Protestant princes of Germany; at its close France received considerable possessions in Alsace, in much the same way that Brandenburg (the future Prussia) then secured valuable additions in the north. The treaty of Westphalia (1648) assured to France certain lands and certain governmental rights possessed by the Emperor in his imperial capacity and as head of the house of Hapsburg, but the provisions were, possibly with intention, left vague at certain points and became the occasion of protracted legal and historical disputes. By a combination of undoubted grants, more or less justified legal interpretations, and the direct seizure of the city of Strasburg, Louis XIV rounded out his possession of the whole of Alsace. The sole exception, Mulhouse, allied with the Swiss Confederation, voluntarily offered itself to France in 1798.

Thus united to France, Alsace and Lorraine retained their boundaries until the treaty of Vienna. The general principle of the territorial adjustments of 1814 was to leave to France its frontiers of 1792; after Napoleon’s return and defeat at Waterloo the treaty of 1815 was supposed to reduce these to the limits of 1789. In Alsace and Lorraine two deviations were made from this principle, both to the disadvantage of France. At the northern end of Alsace France lost to Bavaria the territory between the Lauter and the Queich, including the fortress of Landau which she had possessed in 1789. On the northern border of Lorraine the frontier was readjusted to the advantage of Prussia, partly for strategic reasons, in connection particularly with the fortress of Saarlouis, partly in order to take away from France the valuable coal deposits of the Saar valley.

At the close of the Franco-Prussian war Germany required of France the cession of Alsace and Lorraine, with a boundary on the west which was defined by the treaty of Frankfort in 1871.

In the next forty years Alsace-Lorraine passed through various stages of government, from military dictatorship through a certain amount of territorial independence to the definite constitution imposed by the Reichstag in 1911. Those who had hoped for autonomy were disappointed in this instrument, which failed to elevate the Reichsland to the position of a federated state of the empire, although an anomalous provision was made for its representation in the Bundesrat. Legally Alsace-Lorraine was still a subject territory of the empire.

Under the constitution of 1911 the emperor possessed supreme executive authority, exercised chiefly through a governor (Statthalter) appointed and recalled by the emperor and resident in Strasburg. Legislative power was entrusted to a bicameral Diet (Landtag). The upper house (First Chamber) consisted of forty-six members, half of them named directly by the emperor, the others made up of certain ecclesiastical dignitaries, the president of the Superior Court, and representatives of cities and economic interests, so that the majority was under the emperor’s control. The sixty members of the lower house (Second Chamber) were elected by universal male suffrage. The emperor possessed the right of veto over the legislative acts of the Landtag; he could levy taxes if it refused to pass the budget; and he could prorogue it and issue decrees with the force of law during its recess. Independent in local matters of the Reichstag, the Reichsland was far from independent of the emperor.

In imperial matters Alsace-Lorraine had three representatives in the Bundesrat, appointed by the Statthalter and thus ultimately by the emperor; but “their votes were counted only when it made no difference how they were cast.”[16] Alsace-Lorraine had sent representatives to the Reichstag since 1874; these numbered fifteen, elected by all male citizens over the age of twenty-five.

For local government Alsace-Lorraine consisted of the three districts (Bezirke) of Upper Alsace (capital Colmar), Lower Alsace (capital Strasburg), and Lorraine (capital Metz). Each of these fell into circles (Kreise), cantons, and communes (Gemeinden). The presidents of the districts and the directors of the circles were named by the emperor, as were also the directors of police. The organization of the local bodies and the distribution of their functions were similar to the system prevailing in Prussia.

The internal history of this half-century of German rule is a most interesting chapter, which we must pass over in order to gain time for an analysis of the question about which that history revolved. Taken as a whole, the period must be regarded as an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the rulers to assimilate by force an unwilling population. The German government had great resources on its side—compulsory education on the German model and in the German tongue, the repressive measures of the greatest army and the strongest administrative system in Europe, the influx of immigrants from beyond the Rhine, the development of communication with the other parts of the empire, an extraordinary material prosperity in which the Reichsland shared. Its policy alternated between harsh repression and clumsy efforts to win the people’s good will. There were periods when it seemed to be making headway, by the mere lapse of time and the apparent hopelessness of resistance, if by nothing else; the argument from prosperity had its effects; the protesting leaders turned toward more immediate measures of amelioration within the empire. Then an episode like the Zabern affair of 1913 would occur to show that the country was still governed by military force, and the pro-French feeling would blaze out again.

The relative strength of the French and German parties was a subject of acrimonious and inconclusive debate. The fact remained that there was a large French party, just how large nobody knew, which maintained a vigorous tradition of French speech and sympathies, by the fireside, among the clergy, in intercourse with France itself. Its existence was shown in the midst of the war by a project brought before the Reichstag for colonizing Alsace-Lorraine with ‘reliable’ subjects. The survival of this French party through fifty years of persecution is one of the finest public examples of the triumph of the inner over the outer life. A peasant who was waving an old French flag at Strasburg at the great reception to the French troops in November 1918 was asked how he had obtained it. “My father,” he said, “in 1871 put this under a plank of his barn, and every Sunday of his life he knelt over it in prayer for the return of Alsace to France. When he died, he handed on the charge to me to keep until that day should come.” The two elements in the population are well illustrated at Metz, where a German-speaking majority of soldiers, officials, and tradesmen came in, and a new quarter sprang up about the railroad station in the latest and heaviest style of neo-German architecture, but the old French town still remained, with its narrow streets, its mediaeval gates (especially that great eastern portal called the ‘German Gate’), its hôtel de ville, and its Gothic cathedral. And the three ages of Metz may be typified by this French cathedral of the thirteenth century, with the statue of William II as a prophet filling a niche in one of its portals, and the final inscription below this figure, attached by handcuffs after the armistice, “Sic transit gloria mundi!”

For more than half a century the problem of Alsace-Lorraine has been debated back and forth with arguments which have had no effect on the opposite sides of the controversy.

To Germans the Reichsland is a German country, save for the French-speaking strip along the western border. It was occupied by German tribes in the fifth century; its speech is German; it was a portion of the mediaeval Empire until violently torn away in the seventeenth century; in 1871 Germany was simply reclaiming her lost provinces. Furthermore, as stated in 1871, Metz and the Vosges were a necessary defence of the Fatherland against French aggression, which had been experienced under the two Napoleons and might be expected again. Finally, as stated now but not openly in 1871, the iron of Lorraine was absolutely necessary to the economic life of modern Germany. Germany held Alsace-Lorraine by right of nationality and by right of conquest, the symbol of her national unity achieved in the war by which it was recovered; it was a part of Germany, not an international question, and she would not give it up or discuss giving it up.

To the French Alsace and Lorraine had become and remained fundamentally French, having been assimilated gradually and without violence in the eighteenth century, French most of all by having entered fully into the spirit of the French Revolution and taken an active part therein. They begged to remain a part of France in 1871, as the unanimous protests of their representatives show, and they continued French at heart against the strongest pressure in the opposite direction. In spite of differences of language, such as exist in other parts of France, Alsace and Lorraine were French in social structure, in political ideals, and in the sympathies of the population. Without these lost provinces France was a mutilated country, not fully France. Furthermore, the possession of Metz and the Vosges by a military power like Germany constituted a standing menace to a peaceful country like the French Republic; it also menaced the economic life of France and its defence by making possible, as in 1914, immediate seizure of the richest part of its iron supply. France was robbed of these provinces by force in 1871, and the wrong had to be righted, not only in the interest of France but for the sake of the inhabitants.

There was a growing disposition to recognize that the problem of Alsace-Lorraine concerned not merely France and Germany and the inhabitants of the territory itself, but the world at large. The settlement of this question became of international moment partly as it affected the military and economic balance of power between France on the one hand and a Germany dangerous to international peace on the other; partly as a vindication of international right, violated by the forcible annexation of the two provinces in 1871 in defiance of the express protests of the population; partly in order to eliminate, in the interests of permanent international order, an issue which had “unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years.” Whatever the solution, international interests had to be guarded.

Of the arguments which have been brought forward in support of the respective points of view, that of race is the least significant. It is true that most German writers have urged that the people of Alsace-Lorraine are of Germanic race, akin to the other peoples of the German empire; but this view lacks support from the anthropologist. Neither the tall, fair-haired Teuton nor the short, round-headed Alpine type dominates Alsace-Lorraine. The population is clearly mixed, with racial affinities reaching in both directions and resulting from the survival of an original Gallo-Roman substratum in the uplands along with a considerable infiltration of Teutonic invaders in the valleys. Whatever the exact percentage of the two races in Alsace-Lorraine, the fact has no demonstrable historical or political importance. Both Germany and France are, racially considered, strongly mixed peoples, all three races being well represented in France, and the non-Teutonic type in Germany being marked in the southwest and also in the Slavic regions of the east. To argue from race on either side proves either too much or too little—too much, if all people of Teutonic type (as in England, Scandinavia, and northern France) are claimed for the German empire; too little, if either Germany or France were to be limited to the regions where the Teutonic or the Alpine type respectively predominates.

The question of language is more difficult. It is the German view that Alsace and Lorraine (at least that larger part of Lorraine which speaks German), as German-speaking countries, ought to belong to Germany. The French point out that this theory breaks down in principle in the French-speaking districts of Lorraine; they emphasize the importance of the French-speaking minority in Alsace as a leading force and the strong pro-French feeling in a large part of the German-speaking population; and they deny that language is the proper test of political allegiance.

By a curious paradox, language is one of the most changeable and one of the most permanent facts in European history. It is changeable in that it can be quickly learned or unlearned, especially from one generation to another, as is convincingly illustrated by European immigrants to the United States. It is permanent in that the line of demarcation in the open country shows surprisingly little variation over a period of several centuries. Hence it is highly important to distinguish conditions in the towns and among the more conservative peasant population.

As regards the open country, the linguistic frontier between French and German shows very slight changes since the Middle Ages, when it was fixed in each region by the relative preponderance of the Latin-speaking Gauls or of the Teutonic invaders. Slight advances of German in the Middle Ages and of French since the sixteenth century are traceable at certain points, but are relatively unimportant. The present line of division has never been absolutely determined, but a local study was made by C. This in 1886 and 1887 on the basis of personal examination, and his results have been generally accepted by both French and German scholars. The line follows the political frontier, here the crest of the Vosges, only for about sixty miles in Upper Alsace. In the south it includes two districts to the east, Eteimbes and Montreux, while it dips still farther to the east in the upper valleys of the Weiss and the Breusch and the middle valley of the Liepvrette, all of these districts speaking French. In Lorraine the linguistic frontier lies well to the east of the political boundary, running in a zigzag fashion from Mount Donon to the northwest across the open country through or near Sarrebourg and southwest of Thionville to the Luxemburg boundary. About 6 per cent of the area of Alsace and about 46 per cent of the area of Lorraine thus contain a French-speaking majority.

It must not, however, be supposed that the cleavage is adequately described by any such line. In towns the influence of commerce, education, government, et cetera, often forms a considerable class whose speech differs from that of the surrounding country. In the long period of French occupation a French-speaking class was in this way created in Strasburg, Colmar, Mulhouse (notably), and many other towns of Alsace. After 1871 the large immigration of soldiers and officials to Metz made it appear as a German town in the official statistics (78 per cent German-speaking in 1910). The German majority in Metz has disappeared automatically with the withdrawal of the German garrison and civil government, but the French-speaking element in Alsace showed extraordinary persistence and vitality in the face of every measure of repression. In spite of the compulsory study of German in all schools and the official support of their language by all the agencies of the government, the official German returns show no significant diminution in the percentage of the French-speaking population since exact statistics have been kept:

190019051910
Lower Alsace
German95.7795.7795.80
French3.723.613.80
Upper Alsace
German93.3193.4293.00
French5.595.666.10
Lorraine
German70.5971.3073.50
French25.8723.7822.30
Alsace-Lorraine
German86.7986.8087.20
French11.6011.0310.90

No map of the distribution of language, however exact, would tell the whole story. Community of language is undoubtedly an important influence in producing that ‘consciousness of kind’ upon which nationality rests, and in facilitating the common life of the modern state. We prefer our neighbors to speak our language, however indifferent we may be respecting the shape of their skulls. Community of language is not, however, a necessary basis for a sound national life, as appears in such countries as Belgium and Switzerland. The distinction must also be noted between the local patois and the general national language taught in schools, for in many European countries these are quite different. Thus in Italy a north-Italian cannot understand a Sicilian speaking the local dialect, and there are also regions where French and German are spoken. In Germany there are marked differences between the official High German and the Low German dialects, not to mention the languages of the subject populations. In France languages quite distinct from French exist in Brittany, Provence, the Basque region, and the Flemish territory around Dunkirk, without weakening French nationality or destroying French unity.

In the case of Alsace-Lorraine, it is of fundamental importance to recognize that sympathy for France or Germany did not follow linguistic lines. While few of the French-speaking population were attracted to Germany, there was a very considerable element among the German-speaking population which favored France. Even German observers found French sympathies far more widespread than the French language. It is a well known fact that the anti-German movements of recent years have been more pronounced in Alsace, especially Upper Alsace, than in Lorraine with its larger French-speaking population.

Moreover, language, like race, is a two-edged sword for Germany. If Alsace ought to be part of the empire because it speaks chiefly German, so ought the German-speaking portions of Austria and Switzerland. And if France ought to have given up hope of Alsace because of its German-speaking population, Germany should make no complaint over the parallel renunciation of Prussian Poland or Upper Silesia. Germany cannot ask to apply the principle in the west and reject it in the east.

As a matter of history, the linguistic frontier between French and German has rarely coincided with the political frontier. The national lines, so far as national lines have been drawn, have been drawn by other forces. Language is an important element in national life, but it is not the only element, and in Alsace-Lorraine it has been subordinated to other considerations. Alsace, in spite of its German speech, was reasonably contented under French rule. It never became fully reconciled to German rule, in spite of a large measure of community of language. The causes for its aspirations and sympathies lie deeper than dialect. Although surer and clearer than race, language proved an illusory and insufficient basis for solving the problem of Alsace-Lorraine.

When we come to the historical tradition and affinities of the district, we find that German writers urge the long membership of Alsace and Lorraine in the mediaeval Empire down to 1648, the place of Alsace in the history of German literature, and its affinities with the German culture of the valley of the Rhine. The French bring out certain connections of Alsace and Lorraine with France before Louis XIV, but they urge especially the transformation of these provinces during the French Revolution into a people profoundly imbued with the French conceptions of liberty and democracy, in contradistinction to the political and social traditions and organization of Germany.

Arguments of this sort are by their nature less specific and tangible than those based upon the concrete facts of language and race, and judgments in relation to them are likely to be subjective. At certain points, however, they admit of objective analysis, particularly as regards political affiliations.

There is, in the first place, no question that both Alsace and Lorraine formed part of the mediaeval Empire from the tenth century on. It is also equally clear that the Empire of the Middle Ages was in no way comparable to the national states of modern Europe, but was a loose union of tribal duchies which were later dissolved into a mass of petty feudal states and free cities. The Emperors never succeeded in establishing a strong monarchy or real national unity, being, by virtue of their imperial title, often more interested in asserting a shadowy supremacy over Italy and the valley of the Rhone. In the broader sense the Empire covered at one time or another a considerable part of Europe, as, for example, central and northern Italy and eastern France; in the narrower sense the German kingdom comprised under its loose and ineffective sway the territory of modern Holland, eastern Belgium, a good part of Switzerland, Austria, Bohemia, et cetera. As time went on, the principalities and towns became more rather than less independent, until the treaty of Westphalia (1648) recognized the territorial sovereignty of such princes as had not already established it. Membership in so large and unconsolidated a body would not establish the German character of any particular member, else it would be necessary to incorporate many parts of Europe which have long enjoyed complete independence of Germany.

Moreover, it is important to note that the present German empire is not a continuation of the mediaeval Empire or a successor thereto. The old Empire came to an end in 1806, when Francis I laid aside the imperial crown and assumed the title of emperor of Austria. The modern German empire was created by Prussia in 1871 as a federation of German states from which Austria was carefully excluded. If the mediaeval Emperors had a legitimate successor, it was the Hapsburgs, not the Hohenzollerns, who were in the days of the older Empire merely one of many lines of feudal and electoral princes. The Hapsburgs made over to France their claims to Alsace and Lorraine, to Alsace and Metz in 1648, to the duchy of Lorraine in 1738.

On the other hand the cultural ties between Germany and Alsace, and in some measure between Germany and Lorraine, were stronger than the political. Alsace had its share in the literary and artistic development of the Rhine valley, and this, while affected by the French influences which spread eastward in the later Middle Ages, was preponderantly German. In the matter of speech French historians admit that “Alsace at the beginning of the seventeenth century was an absolutely German country,” and its local dialect was the vehicle of its vigorous local traditions. “At the moment when it passed under French rule it belonged to Germany in language, habits, institutions, and feeling.”[17]

The French government from 1648 to 1789 was tender to the traditions of the conquered territory. Except for the prescription of French in the courts, no restrictions were put on the use of the German language, although French naturally made rapid progress in the towns. There was little change in local institutions. In spite of its centralized monarchy, France itself abounded in local customs, privileges, and jurisdictions, and it was natural and prudent to allow even greater toleration in a newly conquered territory. Subject to the Sovereign Council and the intendant, local affairs went on very much in their old way and in large measure in the German tongue. Much was accomplished for the material wellbeing of the country, and the inhabitants came to recognize certain advantages in French rule. The old regime was a period of gradual assimilation without violence.

The institutions which the old regime tolerated in Alsace, the Revolution swept away. German historians naturally emphasize the excesses and violence of the Revolution, French historians its social and political reforms; but there is general agreement that it took long and rapid strides in the direction of making the country French. “It made an end of all the German mediaeval institutions which remained,” is the sad summary of Meyer’s Handlexikon.[18] The Revolution destroyed privilege, abolished seigniorial rights and jurisdictions, and established a democratic social order as fully in Alsace and Lorraine as in the rest of France. There was of course opposition, and the anti-religious policy of the Revolution was steadily resisted by this strongly Catholic population, but in general Alsace and Lorraine moved with the new movement. The Marseillaise was first sung at Strasburg; Alsatians served in great numbers in the armies which carried the principles of 1789 across Europe; and names like Kléber and Ney illustrate the share of these provinces in the wars of the Napoleonic era. The acceptance of the Revolution in Alsace and Lorraine made them at last one with France. “It is the Revolution, not Louis XIV, which made Alsace French,” wrote Fustel de Coulanges in 1870. “Since that moment Alsace has followed all our destinies, it has lived our life. It has shared all our thoughts and feelings, our victories and defeats, our glory and our defects, all our joys and all our sorrows.”[19] By 1813, confess the German historians of Alsace, “all feeling for Germany had been lost,” and “no trace remained of the ancient community of race between the Alsatians and their German brothers.”[20]

This participation in the life and ideals of France continued until 1871. There was, it is true, a considerable feeling of particularism in Alsace, and to a lesser extent in Lorraine, as well as some natural sympathy between the Protestant minority in Alsace and the Protestants beyond the Rhine; but there was no movement for separation from France and no desire manifested therefor. Toward 1870 the desire for the recovery of these ‘lost provinces’ became more pronounced in Germany, and it was fanned into flame as the war of 1870 progressed; but this nationalistic movement found little or no response among the Alsatians whom it claimed as long-lost kinsmen. If they were still German “socially and ethically,” “politically and nationally they were thoroughly French.” They were Germans as members of the family, Frenchmen as members of the nation.[21] The Germans freely admitted in 1871 that the Alsatians did not yet desire reunion with Germany, but this was laid to their French education, and time and experience of the blessings of German rule were expected to work a rapid change in their desires. The state of opinion in Alsace at the time of the Franco-Prussian war is excellently shown by an outside observer, Sir Robert Morier, then British secretary of legation at Darmstadt, whence he had opportunity to follow closely the events of the war and the course of German opinion. Strongly pro-German and anti-French throughout, he made it his business to inquire from the best German sources whether there was any party in Alsace which desired annexation to Germany, and the answer was uniformly in the negative. Among others he interrogated the Grand Duke of Baden, who had led an army in Alsace, and “had given himself the greatest trouble to ascertain the feeling of the population in regard to Germany and ... had come to the conclusion that not only no annexationist party existed, but that the strongest possible national French feeling pervaded the whole population.”[22]

The usual German justification of the seizure of Alsace and Lorraine may be summed up in the words of the historian Ranke in 1870, “We are fighting Louis XIV.” These provinces had been taken from Germany in the seventeenth century; they must now be taken back by their rightful owner. To many people this is still the essence of the problem of Alsace-Lorraine. Now if the world had not moved in the interval between Louis XIV and 1871, there would be little to say in answer to this argument. In the seventeenth century lands and peoples were passed from one sovereign to another like pieces on a chessboard, and what had been lost in one game might well be retaken in the next. But as regards this question the world had changed in three important respects:—

  1. Germany had changed. The Germany which lost these provinces to Louis XIV was, as we have seen, a jumble of small states, loosely united under the ineffective headship of the Hapsburgs. The Germany which reclaimed them was a Hohenzollern empire from which much of the old empire, including the Hapsburgs, had been separated or excluded.
  2. Alsace and Lorraine had changed. They had lost their German institutions and political sympathies and had become in all political respects French as the result of two centuries of membership in the French state, and especially of their share in the French Revolution.
  3. European public opinion had changed through the growth of nationality, and was coming to regard peoples as entitled to determine their own destiny, or at least to be consulted regarding it. To tear away people from the country of which they formed a part in order to unite them with a state to which they had belonged two centuries before was becoming an anachronism.

It is quite true, then, that Germany in 1871 was fighting Louis XIV, but in the spirit of Louis XIV rather than that of the later nineteenth century. Its appeal to history was in reality a denial of the facts of historic change, in that it asserted the predominance of the older historic tradition against the newer and more vital historic tradition created during the union of Alsace and Lorraine with France. Only a clear pronouncement of the inhabitants themselves in favor of such a transfer could justify it to the thinking of a later age. Yet a popular vote was neither permitted nor desired by Germany in 1871 or at any time between 1871 and 1918.

In all such discussions of the affinities of Alsace and Lorraine, the outsider is struck with the failure of French and German to meet each other’s arguments. The truth seems to be that the disputants move in different realms of thought and feeling. To the Germans the German character of Alsace is accepted as self-evident, so that any connection with France appears unnatural and contrary to all national life. To the French the community of political and social ideas gained by long union with France seems the determining element, and subjection to Germany seems something monstrous.

In spite of all that has been written about the supposed affinities and desires of the population of Alsace-Lorraine, it must not be forgotten that the national interests of Germany and France are vitally concerned in its possession, not merely in the general sense of the desire to keep or to recover something which has been fought over as a matter of national honor, but in the very definite respects of military advantage and economic power. And there have been times when these considerations were put nakedly in the foreground as the dominant motives. Thus Emperor William I wrote to Empress Eugénie October 26, 1870: “The required cessions of territory have no other purpose than to set back the point of departure of the French armies which will come to attack us in the future.”[23] German blood, said Bismarck, “was shed not for the sake of Alsace-Lorraine, but for the German empire, its unity, and the protection of its frontiers.”[24] Stern treatment of its people he defended on the ground that it was the glacis of a fortress, to be used for the benefit of the Fatherland behind it, irrespective of the desires of the conquered.[25]

The military purpose of the annexation was also evident from the boundaries of the ceded territory. The frontier of the Vosges, of obvious advantage to Germany from a strategic point of view, might also be argued for on other grounds as the natural line of demarcation between Alsace and France—the watershed between two river systems, in part the boundary between French and German speech, etc. No such ‘natural’ or linguistic argument, however, could be urged for the annexation of French Lorraine. Here the obvious and declared object was the fortress of Metz, dominating the approaches to the upper Rhine by way of the Saar and to the middle Rhine by way of the valley of the Moselle. Bismarck, it is generally understood, wished to take only Alsace and feared the danger of a French population in the west, but Moltke and the military party insisted on Metz and had their way.

Still another consideration had weight in drawing the frontiers of 1871, namely the iron deposits of Lorraine. Apart from the potash of Upper Alsace, it so happens that the great natural resources of Alsace-Lorraine lay on its outer edges, in the coal of the Saar valley and the iron of the Lorraine border. The problems of the Saar will be discussed in the next chapter in relation to the frontier of 1814; those of the Lorraine frontier are particularly instructive in connection with our present subject.

The iron which forms the greatest mineral resource of Alsace-Lorraine is a part of the minette district, about forty miles in length and fourteen miles in breadth, lying on the borders of France and Luxemburg. The Franco-German frontier of 1871 divided this area nearly equally between the two countries, save for a small strip on the north extending beyond the Luxemburg line. Most of this ore is strongly phosphoric (minette), and could not be worked advantageously until the invention in 1878 of the Thomas process for dephosphorization. The ores are not relatively rich, the average iron content being 33 to 35 per cent; but they are easily mined and are sufficiently porous to be easily crushed, while a limestone which fluxes easily occurs either with the ore, as at Briey, or in the immediate neighborhood.

In 1913 German Lorraine produced 20,600,000 long tons, or three-fourths of the iron mined in Germany. French Lorraine in the same year produced 19,400,000 tons, or 90 per cent of the product of France, of which a considerable portion was exported to Germany. Of the world’s total production of iron in 1913, 29 per cent came from the minette district, i. e., 12 per cent from German Lorraine, 12 per cent from French Lorraine and 5 per cent from Luxemburg. The rest of Europe furnished 24 per cent. The reserves have been estimated as 3000 million tons for French Lorraine and 1830 million tons for German Lorraine; more recent estimates make the two more nearly equal, but with the preponderance in favor of the French. The whole constitutes by far the richest iron supply in Europe and one of the three or four greatest in the world.

This enormous development of the minette district was quite unforeseen in 1871, yet we know that even then the Germans were not blind to the importance of its iron. The iron deposits of the region were carefully studied by German geologists for their government, with the result that the German territorial demands were shaped with the purpose of including the best of them and were further increased between the preliminaries of Versailles and the final treaty of Frankfort. Hence the meanderings of the frontier then drawn. It was believed that the main vein had been secured, comprising the ores near the surface which alone appeared workable with profit, and that nothing valuable in the deposit had been omitted. Only later was it discovered that the dip of the strata toward Briey and Longwy concealed an even richer field on the French side which could be worked to a considerable depth. Moreover the German geologists of 1871 were especially interested in the phosphorus-free ore and could not foresee the value which the Thomas process would give the minette. Lamentations over their shortsightedness were heard before the war,[26] and in August 1914 German engineers hastened to occupy Briey and Longwy, whose ores are valued not only for their content but for mixing with the less calcareous German ores. It was frequently declared in Germany that without this occupied territory the production of German munitions would have to cease, although this is hardly justified by the facts now available concerning the actual use which was made of minette ore for this purpose.

Moreover, it is well to remember that readjustments of the Lorraine frontier at the expense of France were a constant objective of the Germans throughout the war. At times these were sketched broadly as part of a general advance of the German boundary along the whole front from Belfort to the mouth of the Somme, but more frequently they are described as “improvements” of the frontier in Lorraine, with the minette area of French Lorraine and the great border fortresses as the definite objectives. The acquisition of Briey and Longwy figured in all the principal programs of annexation, especially those of the great economic interests, which went so far as to declare that a war which did not secure them for Germany would be a failure. The object was clearly economic, or rather, in view of the place of iron and steel in modern warfare, military-economic.

More specifically military was the demand for the great fortresses of this part of the French frontier: Belfort, commanding the ‘Burgundian’ gate leading from Upper Alsace to the valleys of the Doubs and Saône, and still left in French hands after its heroic resistance of 1871; Epinal, on the Moselle; Toul, commanding the passage from the Moselle to the Meuse; and Verdun on the Meuse, whose importance was made clear to the world in the great operations of 1916-17. The strength of these positions is evident from the fact that the French hold on them remained unshaken during more than four years of war. Their importance is further indicated by the German demand, made at the outbreak of hostilities, that Toul and Verdun be handed over as guarantees of French neutrality. Such conditions of peace kept reappearing, sometimes under the specious suggestion of a “slight rectification of frontier” without indicating the decisive value of a few miles of territory in this region.

The day of such Pan-German dreams is over. They are mentioned merely to indicate the nature of the German war aims, and the fact that German interest in Alsace-Lorraine was not dictated wholly by motives of the language, race, or historic affinities of the population.

During the war the German attitude on Alsace-Lorraine was to stand pat, while at the same time taking stronger measures for destroying the local opposition. The Germans refused, as before, to admit that there was anything to discuss, much less anything to yield. Autonomy[27], even, was not officially proposed until the last month of the war, in a last effort to save Germany’s pride and iron mines. The German peace terms sent to President Wilson in December 1916 are said to have conceded to France only the small portion of Upper Alsace which had been held by French troops throughout the war. The support of “the just claims of France respecting Alsace-Lorraine”[28] which formed part of the terms proposed by the Austrian emperor in 1917 was promptly disavowed by Germany. Only rare Minority Socialists dared support the idea of a plebiscite.

All this changed with the armistice and the requirement of evacuation of the Reichsland by German troops and officials. The whole of Germany became suddenly enamored of the virtues of a plebiscite. President Wilson’s programme was invoked, on the alleged ground that the wrong done to France in 1871 lay simply in not calling for a popular vote, and the German government declared itself ready to right the wrong now by means of such a vote. The alternatives proposed for the voting were union with Germany, union with France, and an independent state free to form a customs union with either country. If Germany could not keep the Reichsland itself, she might perhaps thus keep its iron and its trade! To such proposals the French turned a deaf ear. Those who had opposed a plebiscite before the victory were not likely to support it now, and doubt disappeared before the reception which Strasburg gave the French troops and the President and Premier. “This is the best of plebiscites,” said President Poincaré in the midst of his tumultuous welcome by the Alsatians, and there were few to deny it. The Germans were genuinely surprised at the warmth of the popular enthusiasm, and began to ask themselves why after fifty years they had failed to get the sympathy of the people.

During the war the idea of a plebiscite in Alsace-Lorraine had been popular with certain sections of Allied and neutral opinion, both as a form of self-determination and as a means of settling finally and conclusively this ancient dispute. Such a decision would be democratic, and it would be final. Against it had been urged the grave practical difficulties which stood in the way of any free expression of the real opinion of the real inhabitants, particularly in view of the emigration of about half a million since 1871, the coming in of some hundreds of thousands from Germany, and the wholesale condemnations and deportations during the war. A popular vote under these conditions would have opened a wide field to bribery, intimidation, and influence of every sort, and would have engendered great bitterness and recrimination. A serious objection of principle was also raised on the part of the French, who felt they would thus be recognizing Germany’s legal right in the Reichsland. The will of the people, they said, had been expressed by the unanimous declarations of their elected representatives in the French Parliament in 1871 and in the German Reichstag in 1874, yet it had been openly flouted by Germany so long as she had any chance of retaining the Reichsland by other means. Germany could not be permitted to ignore a principle at one moment and to invoke it at another when it might possibly be manipulated in her favor, a system of “heads I win, tails you lose.” Such a proceeding was plainly unfair to France, and it also set a bad example of international morality by leaving Germany a chance to profit by her violation of international right in 1871. Under the guise of popular rights this would really sanction an international wrong. Some even maintained that, the treaty of Frankfort having been torn up by Germany in 1914, Alsace and Lorraine therewith reverted to France, ipso facto disannexed. To accept a plebiscite as the basis of restoration was to admit the lawfulness of the act of violence by which they had been seized.

These arguments were hard to answer save on the ground of a strongly expressed demand on the part of the people of Alsace-Lorraine, and, whatever their opinion, no such general demand was forthcoming. Certainly Germany’s record of oppression and failure as a ruler was sufficient to forfeit whatever claims she might justly have had upon the Reichsland, and she had formally accepted President Wilson’s demand that “the wrong done to France in 1871 should be righted.” That wrong consisted, not in failing to hold a plebiscite, but in contemptuously disregarding the unmistakable expressions of popular opinion then and thereafter expressed.

French Socialist opinion still wanted a plebiscite, but the purpose was plainly to satisfy a theoretical scruple, which required a popular vote for any change of sovereignty. For good or ill, Alsace-Lorraine came back to France without a popular consultation; it was administered by France in the interval between the armistice and the treaty of peace; and the treaty recognized French sovereignty as beginning with the armistice, November 11, 1918. The deed of Frankfort was thus undone. A plebiscite seemed impracticable, unless as a mere matter of form, and in that case it was unnecessary. There was something to be said for summoning a popular assembly for other purposes which might easily have expressed the opinion of the people, but this again would have been chiefly a matter of form, to forestall future objections.

So the fundamental provisions of the treaty which concern Alsace-Lorraine consist merely of a preamble by which the high contracting parties, Germany thus included, recognize “the moral obligation to redress the wrong done by Germany in 1871 both to the rights of France and to the wishes of the population of Alsace and Lorraine,” and the article[29] restoring to France the territories ceded by the treaty of Frankfort. The other articles[30] are, essentially, consequences and applications of this act of restoration. Some of them merely reproduce, in the opposite sense, clauses of the treaty of 1871. In general, however, the Paris articles are fuller and more complicated, partly because they had to be adapted, either by reference or by way of exception, to the other provisions of the instrument in which they are contained, partly because the restoration of territory after half a century necessarily raises questions not involved in the original cession.

Such a question was that of citizenship, which is regulated by an elaborate annex, adjusted to the complex conditions of citizenship and nationality which had arisen in the Reichsland. The general principle adopted is, broadly speaking, that French nationality is acquired ipso facto by those who had lost it in 1871 and by their descendants, except the offspring of a native mother and a German father who had come to the Reichsland subsequently to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war; that it may be claimed before the French authorities by all others save Germans and the descendants of Germans who have come in since 1870; and that such German immigrants and their descendants can acquire French citizenship only by the process of naturalization. The purpose of the whole was to admit on the basis of domicile before 1870, and to exclude, for the present, the Germans, with their descendants, who had come to the Reichsland in large numbers since the German conquest.

The economic provisions had to consider not only the status of such individual matters as debts and contracts, pensions and suits at law, but also the new relations created in the region as a whole. Thus France acquired the public property, including the railroads, without any payment, and no share of the German public debt or war indemnity was attached to the transferred territory—arrangements which offset in some measure the principal and interest of the five milliards of war indemnity imposed by Germany in 1871. German economic penetration is restricted not only by the liquidation of existing enterprises but by the right to prohibit new participation in public utilities, mines, quarries, and metallurgical establishments. Important temporary provisions guard against the effects of a sudden interruption of relations between the Left and Right Banks in such matters as ports, terminals, and water power, and in respect to customs tariffs, a period of five years being set during which free exportation is permitted into Germany and free importation of textile materials from Germany into Alsace and Lorraine. This last is particularly important, for the Reichsland enjoyed profitable markets in Germany, and its economic prosperity was constantly urged as an argument for remaining under German rule. Whether or not France can furnish equally good outlets for local manufactures, she must at least provide a reasonable period for readjustment of the lines of trade.

The largest economic question involved in the return of the lost provinces to France is not mentioned in the treaty, namely the enormous transfer of mineral resources. By securing the potash of Upper Alsace France halves the German supply and thus breaks the German monopoly of the world’s mineral potash; by joining the iron of Lorraine to the iron of Briey, Longwy, and Nancy, France obtains, save for the small share of Luxemburg, full control of the greatest iron field in Europe. The minette ore is no longer shared between France and Germany, it is monopolized by France. If France had Germany’s coal, she might try to establish an economic supremacy as great as that possessed by Germany at the outbreak of the war. Late in 1918 one began to hear suggestions for some sort of condominium in Lorraine, or for a guarantee of German participation in its mine and furnaces; but such proposals found no favor with the French government. No such arrangements had been made for the benefit of France in 1871, and she saw no reason for making them now. And if other great powers had pointed out the danger of so great a monopoly in the world, the French might have replied that they had little coal, less oil, and no copper. After all, the nub of the situation is that France needs coal and Germany needs iron, and sooner or later it will be necessary to exchange one for the other. The sooner this natural necessity is recognized in a modus vivendi, the better for all concerned. If the compelling forces of trade are not allowed to assert themselves with reasonable freedom, the matter may well cause grave international difficulty.

Nor did the conference concern itself with other internal matters which had been much discussed before the armistice. During the forty-seven years of separation, France and the Reichsland had necessarily diverged in many matters of institutions, legislation, and social conditions, so that several difficult problems of readjustment were presented. The law of the new German civil code of 1900, the German organization of local government, the German systems of taxation and social legislation were well established in Alsace-Lorraine, and could not immediately be rooted up, if indeed their abolition was always desirable. Perhaps the most striking point of divergence was to be found in the relations of church and state. The Reichsland had preserved the system of the Concordat of 1801 and analogous measures for the Protestant and Jewish religious bodies, so that the government maintained religion from public funds and exercised direct authority over the appointment of the clergy. In France the Separation Laws of 1905 and 1907 had carried through the complete separation of church and state, so that the state relinquished the nomination of the higher clergy and discontinued the payment of clerical salaries, at the same time taking over ecclesiastical property. France had also suppressed the teaching religious orders and put all education into lay hands in so-called ‘neutral schools.’ These measures were viewed with grave disapproval in Alsace-Lorraine, a deeply religious country where the great majority of the schools are under the control of religious bodies and much of the lower education is still in the hands of nuns. Serious difficulty would be encountered in extending the French system to Alsace-Lorraine, and in this, as in other fields, some measure of local independence is required, at least for the present.

In adjusting their relations with the restored provinces the French will need an uncommon measure of tact, sympathetic understanding, and breadth of view, and any mistakes will be viewed critically in the country itself and magnified beyond the Rhine. Nevertheless, the questions are not now international, and it is earnestly to be hoped that they may not become international. They may best be left in the hands of those directly concerned, the people of France, including henceforth, for this as for all other purposes, the three departments of the Haut-Rhin, the Bas-Rhin, and the Moselle, which were once known as Alsace-Lorraine.