ALSACE-LORRAINE
On slight pretext, Germany in 1864 and in 1866 had made wars against Denmark and Austria that might easily have been avoided.
France took notice of the warlike ambitions of her neighbor and began to prepare for the war that she knew would soon come between her and Germany. The French emperor probably also desired this war, but the French people did not and France was not ready for it.
The Prussian chancellor, Bismarck, was a man of "iron and blood," for only by these two forces did he believe the Germans could advance.
In 1870, the Spanish Liberals expelled Queen Isabella II and offered the crown of Spain to a Hohenzollern prince. The offer was declined, but after Bismarck saw to what its acceptance might lead, he succeeded in having it renewed. Then the Emperor Napoleon informed King William that he would regard its acceptance as a sufficient ground for war against Germany. The Hohenzollern prince, however, rejected the offer and the matter might have ended here, had not Napoleon directed the French ambassador to secure from King William a promise never to permit a Hohenzollern prince to accept the Spanish crown.
King William who was at Ems refused to do this and declined to give the French ambassador another interview as he was leaving Ems that night. He telegraphed an account of the affair to Bismarck who realized that here was his chance to bring on the war he desired. He changed the wording of King William's telegram in such a way that when it was given out the next day, it gave the impression to Germans that their king had been insulted by the French ambassador and to Frenchmen that their ambassador had been insulted by the king of Prussia.
"There is little doubt," writes a German historian, "that, had this telegram been worded differently, the Franco-German struggle might have been avoided."
French pride would not now allow France to withdraw her request, and the war that Bismarck desired became certain—a war caused by a scrap of paper on which were written German lies signed by German leaders. After reading this story of the falsity of the greatest of all Prussian statesmen, Bismarck, it does not seem strange that another scrap of paper on which the Prussian government had written lies brought England into the World War and assured the defeat of Germany.
Poorly prepared, France could not stand long against the Prussian war machine. After a sharp conflict lasting about six months, the French National Assembly at Bordeaux was forced to ratify the unfair treaty which required her to pay a great indemnity in money and to give up the coveted provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, with the exception of Belfort. The beautiful country which had been the home of Jeanne d'Arc, the sacred heroine of France, was to be given over to rough and haughty bands of soldiers such as she had given her life to expel from her beloved France. But France had to choose between losing a small portion of the country, or meeting with complete destruction in war against greatly superior forces who had already destroyed the French military power.
[Illustration: Jeanne d'Arc, rising in her stirrups, holds on high her sword, as if to consecrate it for a war of Right. This inspiring statue, located near Grant's Tomb on Riverside Drive, New York City, overlooks the Hudson, where it bade Godspeed to all the American soldiers and sailors going overseas to deliver France from the Hun.]
One morning in that fateful year of 1871, a notice was posted in the towns and villages of Alsace and Lorraine telling the people that the next day these provinces would pass from French into German hands. In anticipation of this, petitions from these provinces had continually been sent both to France and Germany declaring deep loyalty only to France. For the last forty-eight years these glowing words have been true.
"France cannot consent to it. Europe cannot sanction it. We call upon the Governments and Nations of the whole World to witness in advance that we hold null and void all acts and treaties … which so consent to the abandoning to the foreigner all or any part of our Provinces of Alsace and Lorraine."
And their plea, drawn up and signed by the fifteen representatives to the Reichstag, is still kept at Metz. Some one has well said that it is "one of the scraps of paper against which the strength of the German Empire has been broken."
The Germans after hearing innumerable petitions became exasperated. They imprisoned many of the inhabitants, censored the press, and established such a strict system of passports that "a veritable Chinese wall was raised around the annexed country."
And more than this, although the Germans may not always have realized that they were doing so, they humiliated the people by degrading things looked upon by them as holy. For instance, the Kaiser had a statue of himself, upturned moustache and all, placed upon the cathedral of Metz. He wore a Biblical cowl and was pointing impressively to a parchment scroll. He was supposed to represent the prophet Daniel. This statue was found headless in December, 1918.
Despite the petitions, for all those years the policy of the government never varied. The chancellor, Bismarck, replied every time that Alsace-Lorraine was not annexed for the sake of the people. They could move to some section still under French control. The provinces were taken from France only to further the interest of the German Empire. "If this were a permanent peace," he said, "we would not have done it. So long as France possesses Strassburg and Metz her strategical position is stronger offensively than ours is defensively." There was going to be another war and Germany needed these provinces for military advantage!
But the German government did realize more and more how bitterly opposed to the annexation were these unfortunate people, and decided to crush out everything French in Alsace-Lorraine. The people were forbidden to write or speak the French language; even the signboards at the street crossings were changed to German. How the children spent the last day that French could be taught in the schools is told by a little Alsatian boy.
That morning I was very late for school, and was terribly afraid of being scolded, for M. Hamel, the schoolmaster, had said he intended to examine us on the participles, and I knew not a word about them. The thought came into my head that I would skip the class altogether, and so off I went across the fields.
The weather was so hot and clear!
One could hear the blackbirds whistling on the edge of the wood; in Ripperts' meadow, behind the sawyard, the Prussian soldiers were drilling. All this attracted me much more than the rules about participles; but I had the strength to resist and so I turned and ran quickly back towards the school.
In passing before the town hall, I saw that a number of people were stopping before the little grating where notices are posted up. For two years past it was there we learned all the bad news, the battles lost, and the orders of the commandant; so I thought to myself without stopping: "What can it be now?" Then, as I was running across the square, the blacksmith, Wachter, who was there with his apprentice, just going to read the notice, cried out to me:—
"Don't be in such a hurry, little fellow, you will be quite early enough for your school."
I thought he was making fun of me, and I was quite out of breath when I entered M. Hamel's little courtyard.
Generally, at the beginning of the class, there was a great uproar which one could hear in the street; desks opened and shut, lessons studied aloud all together, with hands over ears to learn better, and the big ruler of the master tapping on the table: "More silence there."
I had counted on all this commotion to gain my desk unobserved; but precisely that day all was quiet as a Sunday morning. Through the open window I could see my schoolmates already in their places, and M. Hamel, who was walking up and down with the terrible ruler under his arm. I had to open the door and enter in the midst of this complete silence. You can fancy how red I turned and how frightened I was.
But no, M. Hamel looked at me without any anger, and said very gently:—
"Take your place quickly, my little Franz, we were just going to begin without you."
I climbed up on the bench and sat down at once at my desk.
Only then, a little recovered from my fright, I noticed that our master had on his new green overcoat, his fine plaited frill, and the embroidered black skull-cap which he put on for the inspection days or the prize distributions. Besides, all the class wore a curious solemn look. But what surprised me most of all was to see at the end of the room, on the seats which were usually empty, a number of the village elders seated and silent like the rest of us; old Hansor with his cocked hat, the former mayor, the old postman, and a lot of other people. Everybody looked melancholy; and Hansor had brought an old spelling book, ragged at the edges, which he held wide open on his knees, with his big spectacles laid across the pages.
While I was wondering over all this, M. Hamel had placed himself in his chair, and with the same grave, soft voice in which he had spoken to me, he addressed us:—
"My children, it is the last time that I shall hold class for you. The order is come from Berlin that only German is to be taught in the schools of Alsace and Lorraine from now on. The new master arrives tomorrow. Today is your last lesson in French. I ask you to be very attentive."
These words quite upset me. Ah, the wretches! this then was what they had posted up at the town hall.
My last lesson in French!
And I who hardly knew how to write. I should never learn then! I must stop where I was! How I longed now for the wasted time, for the classes when I played truant to go birds'-nesting, or to slide on the Saar! The books which I was used to find so wearisome, so heavy to carry—my grammar, my history—now seemed to me old friends whom I was very sorry to part with. The same with M. Hamel. The idea that he was going away, that I should never see him again, made me forget the punishment and the raps with the ruler.
Poor man!
It was in honor of this last class that he had put on his Sunday clothes, and now I understood why the elders of the village had come and seated themselves in the schoolroom. That meant that they were grieved not to have come oftener to the school. It was a sort of way of thanking our master for his forty years of good service, and of showing their respect for their country that was being taken from them.
I had come as far as this in my reflections when I heard my name called. It was my turn to recite. What would I not have given to have been able to say right through that famous rule of the participles, quite loud and very clear, without a stumble; but I bungled at the first word, and stopped short, balancing myself on my bench, with bursting heart, not daring to raise my head. I heard M. Hamel speak to me:—
"I shall not scold thee, my little Franz, thou must be punished enough without that. See how it is. Every day one says, 'Bah! There is time enough. I shall learn tomorrow.' And then see what happens. Ah! that has been the great mistake of our Alsace, always to defer its lesson until tomorrow. Now those folk have a right to say to us, 'What! you pretend to be French and you cannot even speak or write your language!' In all that, my poor Franz, it is not only thou that art guilty. We must all bear our full share in the blame. Your parents have not cared enough to have you taught. They liked better to send you to work on the land or at the factory to gain a few more pence. And I too, have I nothing to reproach myself with? Have I not often made you water my garden instead of learning your lessons? And when I wanted to fish for trout, did I ever hesitate to dismiss you?"
Then from one thing to another M. Hamel began to talk to us about the French language, saying that it was the most beautiful language in the world, the clearest, the most forceful; that we must guard it among us and never forget it, because when a people falls into slavery, as long as it holds firmly to its own tongue, it holds the key of its prison. Then he took a grammar and gave us our lesson. I was astonished to find how well I understood. All he said seemed to me so easy, so easy. I think, too, that I never listened so hard, and that he had never taken such pains to explain. One would have said that before going away the poor man wished to give us all his knowledge, to ram it all into our heads at one blow.
That lesson finished, we passed to writing. For that day M. Hamel had prepared for us some quite fresh copies, on which was written in beautiful round hand: France, Alsace, France, Alsace. They looked like little banners floating round the class room on the rail of our desks. To see how hard every one tried! And what a silence there was! One could hear nothing but the scraping of the pens on the paper. Once some cock-chafers flew in; but nobody took any heed, not even the little ones, who worked away at their pothooks with such enthusiasm and conscientiousness as if feeling there was something French about them. On the roof of the school the pigeons cooed softly, and I thought to myself, hearing them:—
"Are they to be forced to sing in German too?"
From time to time, when I raised my eyes from the page, I saw M. Hamel motionless in his chair, looking fixedly at everything round him, as if he would like to carry away in his eyes all his little schoolhouse. Think of it! For forty years he had been in the same place, in his court outside or with his class before him. Only the benches and the desks had grown polished by the constant rubbing; the walnut trees in the courtyard had grown up, and the honeysuckle, which he had planted himself, now garlanded the windows up to the roof. What a heart-break it must be for this poor man to leave all these things, and to hear his sister coming and going in the room above, packing up their boxes, for they were to go the next day—to leave the country forever.
All the same, what courage he had to carry out the class to the end! After the writing we had our history lesson; then the little ones sang all together their Ba, Be, Bi, Bo, Bu. There at the end of the room, old Hansor put on his spectacles, and holding his spelling-book with both hands, he spelt the letters with them. One could see that he too did his best; his voice trembled with emotion, and it was so funny to hear him that we all wanted to laugh and cry at once. Ah! I shall always remember that class.
Suddenly the clock of the church rang for noon, then for the Angelus. At the same moment, the trumpets of the Prussians returning from drill pealed out under our windows. M. Hamel rose from his chair, turning very pale. Never had he looked to me so tall.
"My friends," he said, "my friends, I—I—" But something choked him. He could not finish the sentence.
Then he turned to the blackboard, took a piece of chalk, and pressing with all his might, he wrote as large as he could:—
VIVE LA FRANCE[1]
The determination of the people of Alsace and Lorraine not to submit to the pressure of their conquerors was made evident even up to the very day that war was declared in 1914. Von Moltke had predicted that "It will require no less than fifty years to wean the hearts of her lost Provinces from France." Notwithstanding all their efforts, the German leaders in 1890 had said, "After nineteen years of annexation, German influence has made no progress in Alsace." When the German soldiers at the beginning of the World War entered the provinces, their officers said to them, "We are now in enemy country."
This remark seems all the more strange because the population of the provinces was largely German. Most of the French citizens had emigrated to France, and all the young men had left to avoid German military service and the possibility of being forced to fight France. Many Germans had moved in. Indeed if at this late day a vote had been taken, no doubt the majority would have expressed the desire to remain under German rule. But Germany still considered the country as an enemy. She knew the whole world disapproved of her seizing the provinces. Therefore it did not surprise the German government to learn that President Wilson, as one of the fourteen points to be observed in making a permanent peace for the world, gave as the eighth,—
"The wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871, in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years should be righted."
At the foot of the Vosges mountains near the Lorraine border, the American armies joined those of France. There in the Lorraine sector they fought valiantly and finally drove the enemy headlong before them through the Argonne forest, helping to make it possible for the peacemakers to gather again in the great council hall at Versailles where, nearly half a century before, France had seen the first German emperor crowned and then had been forced to sign the humiliating agreement that later became the Treaty of Frankfort.
But now the tables were turned; this meeting was in answer to the plea of a defeated Germany who was to agree to return her stolen property and to make good as far as possible the wrong she had done France and the world.
The statue of Strassburg in Paris had been stripped of the mourning which had covered it for nearly fifty years. Germany, as a victor, had indeed been a hard master, not caring in the least for the interests of the people in the conquered territories. How different was the spirit of the French as victors is shown in General Pétain's orders to the French armies after the signing of the armistice.
[Illustration: Memorial Day, 1918, was celebrated abroad as well as at home. In Masevaux, the provisional capital of the recaptured Alsatian territory, the American troops, headed by their band, paraded through the streets. In the contingent directly behind the band you can see a delegation of American and French officers and prominent citizens.]
As a piece of military literature it ranks with the soundest and the most eloquent ever delivered. In the spirit of President Lincoln's second inaugural address, "With malice towards none, with charity for all," it emphasizes a contrast which will be remembered for generations, to the everlasting shame of Germany and the glory of France. To every true American patriot it means that our armies have been fighting with the flower and chivalry of France, not for revenge, but for the overthrow of oppression, the freedom of the oppressed, and for honorable and permanent peace.
To the French Armies:—
During long months you have fought. History will record the tenacity and fierce energy displayed during these four years by our country which had to vanquish in order not to die.
Tomorrow, in order to better dictate peace, you are going to carry your arms as far as the Rhine. Into that land of Alsace-Lorraine that is so dear to us, you will march as liberators. You will go further: all the way into Germany to occupy lands which are the necessary guarantees of just reparation.
France has suffered in her ravaged fields and in her ruined villages. The freed provinces have had to submit to intolerable, vexatious, and odious outrages, but you are not to answer these crimes by the commission of violences, which, under the spur of your resentment, may seem to you legitimate.
You are to remain under discipline and to show respect to persons and property. You will know, after having vanquished your adversary by force of arms, how to impress him further by the dignity of your attitude, and the world will not know which to admire more, your conduct in success or your heroism in fighting.
I address a fond and affectionate greeting to our dead, whose sacrifices gave us the victory. And I send a message of salutation, full of sad affection, to the fathers, to the mothers, to the widows and orphans of France, who, in these days of national joy, dry their tears for a moment to acclaim the triumph of our arms. I bow my head before your magnificent flags.
Vive la France!
(Signed) PETAIN.
[1] Translated from the French of Alphonse Daudet.