VI.
The “German Enigma” of Monsieur Bourdon is mainly an objective, impartial, and impersonal study, and the author has been careful not to obtrude his own private views. It is only in the last chapter that he attempts to draw the lesson and point out the conclusion of his own inquiry. And his conclusion is an eloquent though restrained plea for a Franco-German rapprochement, and in favour of the only policy which will bring about that reconciliation. France, he argues, does not want a revision of the Treaty of Frankfurt. She does not want compensation or revenge. French history contains a sufficiently brilliant roll of glorious military achievements that the French people may afford to forget the reverses and humiliations of 1870. A French statesman, on the eve of the Treaty of Frankfurt, made the rhetorical statement that France would never surrender one stone of her fortresses nor one inch of her territory. Animated by a very different spirit, modern French statesmen do not claim back to-day one inch of lost territory. All that the French people demand is that the claims of justice shall be heard, that Alsace-Lorraine shall cease to groan under the heel of an arbitrary despot, that Alsace-Lorraine shall be governed according to her own laws, that the Alsatians shall be treated as a free people, and not as conquered subjects.