Dr. Sanderson Replies
To the Editor of The New York Times:
Although I hate to enter into a controversy with Prof. Kuno Francke, who was once my excellent friend, I cannot refrain from answering his article which appeared in last Sunday's NEW YORK TIMES.
How can any one say, in all fairness, that Germany's policy toward France during the last forty-three years has been one of the utmost restraint and forbearance, and has been dictated by the one desire to make her forget the loss of the two provinces? What are the facts? We know that not once, but again and again, since 1878, Germany has tried to provoke France into war. We know that on one occasion Queen Victoria herself threatened the Kaiser with Great Britain's intervention if he did not desist from his intended attack on France. And to cite only the two most recent instances, the Agadir affair and the enforced resignation of the French Premier, Delcassé! Would Germany have swallowed such insults?
This may be the German conception of "utmost restraint and forbearance," but it appeared to the French, as it did to the rest of the world, that it required their utmost restraint and forbearance to remain calm under the affronts.
The fact that Alsace-Lorraine was German up to the seventeenth century, and inhabited by German stock, cannot be brought forward today, after more than 200 years, to justify the retaking of those provinces by the Germans. The whole world would be in a state of continual warfare if nations claimed provinces or States that belonged to them once upon a time. Richelieu's idea was that the Rhine was the natural and geographical frontier between France and Germany, and the war was undertaken to carry out that plan. Since then the inhabitants have become French, and the attempts to re-Germanize them have proved futile. Prof. Francke may well doubt if the acquisition of these provinces was a fortunate thing for Germany. It was undoubtedly the most unfortunate thing not only for Germany but for France and the rest of Europe, for it kept open a wound which might have been healed either by a return of the lost provinces, with or without compensation, or by granting them autonomy, or, better still, by leaving it to the inhabitants to choose for themselves, as France did with Nice and Savoy.
The ruthless methods of a Bismarck are no longer of this age. They are too odious, and the human conscience revolts at them. What a preposterous idea, in this twentieth century, to compel by force millions of people to renounce their traditions and even their language! If Great Britain had followed the same method in dealing with the French Canadians, instead of loyal subjects she would have made rebels of them all.
It is neither right nor just nor truthful to say that Germany has done her best during the last four decades to heal the wounds struck by her to French national pride. On the contrary, Germany's attitude has been all along one of studied provocation; and if the instances already mentioned are not sufficient, many others could be added.
Germany abetted French colonial expansion. Well, by what right should she have opposed it? And if she yielded to France in Morocco, it was only after France had given Germany part of her African possessions rather than go to war with her.
It will be news to the world to be informed that there can be no reasonable doubt that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been gradually settling down to willing co-operation with the German administration. Certainly such a statement is in violent contradiction with all we hear and read and know of the state of mind, the feelings, and aspirations of the inhabitants of those two provinces.
To argue that the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine is not a vital necessity to France; that without these provinces she has recovered her prosperity and her prestige, and that it is mere illusion to think that the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine would add to her glory is pure sophistry. It is just as if you said to a man whom you had robbed of some valuable property: "What does it matter? You are just as well off without it." Yes, Prof. Larson did voice the sentiment of the vast majority of his countrymen when he stated that France could not and would not recognize the treaty of Frankfurt. If I have an enemy who takes me by surprise and with revolver leveled at my head compels me to sign a paper by which I despoil myself to his advantage, what is the validity of such a document?
That is the way that all Frenchmen of all classes look upon the treaty of Frankfurt, wrung from them under duress.
The term "revanche" is a slogan. It simply typifies in one word the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine; but it does not carry with it the idea of willfully laying waste the enemy's country, burning and pillaging, shooting inoffensive non-combatants, and cleaning banks of all the gold they contain.
Another statement which is misleading in Prof. Francke's article is the one which refers to the "growing menace from France," in which he speaks of the increasing armament that has been going on in that country since 1912. But what is called in Germany "the menace from France" is called in the latter country "the menace from Germany." Who started these enormous armaments? Each time Germany increased her army France was forced to do the same; and when France recently increased from two to three years the duration of military service, it was her only way of meeting Germany's increase of 500,000 men.
The attempt to change the rôles and present France to the world as the aggressor, or even as premeditating an attack upon Germany, is futile. It is a strange and yet not uncommon psychological fact that the hate of the conqueror is often greater than that of the conquered; and it is German, not French, hate which has forced Germany into this savage war. France had recovered too rapidly from her disasters; she was too rich; her colonies were too vast and too prosperous; she must be crushed. What right had she to have large colonies when Germany, the superior nation, had none worth mentioning? There you have the key to the Kaiser's repeated provocations and to his final attack.
In regard to England and Russia, the writer will simply confine himself to the statement that if the German Imperial Government can produce as clean a bill of health as the "White Paper" of the British Foreign Office, just published, it will do more to convince American public opinion of the justice of its cause than anything that has yet been written in the press by Germans and their sympathizers.
R.L. SANDERSON.
Yale University, New Haven, Conn., Sept. 5, 1914.