That there was still an Alsace-Lorraine "question" after forty years is a sad commentary either on the justice of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany or on the ability of Germany to assimilate that territory which she felt was historically, geographically, and racially a part of the Teutonic Empire. In 1887, when "protesting deputies" were returned to the Reichstag in overwhelming numbers, despite the governmental weapons of intimidation, disenfranchisement, and North German immigration, Bismarck was face to face with the one great failure of his career. He consoled himself with the firm belief that all would be changed when the second generation, which knew nothing of France and to which the war was only a memory, peopled the unhappy provinces.
But that second generation came. Those who participated in the war of 1870, or who suffered by it, were few and far between. The hotheads and extreme francophiles left the country long ago, and their place was taken by immigrants who were supposed to be loyal sons of the Vaterland. Those of the younger indigenous brood, whose parents had brought them up as irreconcilables, ran away to serve in the French foreign legion, or went into exile, and became naturalized Frenchmen before their time of military service arrived. And yet the unrest continued. Strasbourg, Metz, Mulhouse, and Colmar were centres of political agitation, which an autocratic government and Berlin police methods were powerless to suppress.
The year 1910 marked the beginning of a new period of violent protest against Prussian rule. Not since 1888 was there such a continuous agitation and such a continuous persecution. The days when the Prussian police forbade the use of the French language on tombstones were revived, and the number of petty police persecutions recorded in the local press was equalled only by the number of public demonstrations on the part of the people, whose hatred of everything Prussian once more came to a fever-heat.
Let me cite a few incidents which I have taken haphazard from the journals of Strasbourg and Metz during the first seven months of 1910. The Turnverein of Robertsau held a gymnastic exhibition in which two French societies, those of Belfort and Giromagny, were invited to participate. The police refused to allow the French societies to march to the hall in procession, as was their custom, or to display their flags. Their two presidents were threatened with arrest. A similar incident was reported from Colmar. At Noisseville and Wissembourg the fortieth annual commemoration services held by the French veterans were considered treasonable, and they were informed that they would never again be allowed to hold services in the cemetery. At Mulhouse the French veterans were insulted by the police and not allowed to display their flags even in the room where they held their banquet. At the college of Thann a young boy of twelve, who curiously enough was the son of a notorious German immigrant, whistled the Marseillaise and was locked up in a cell for this offence. The conferring of the cross of the Legion of Honour on Abbé Faller, at Mars-la-Tour, created such an outburst of feeling that the German ambassador at Paris was instructed to request the French Government to refrain from decorating Alsatians. A volunteer of Mulhouse was reprimanded and refused advancement in the army because he used his mother-tongue in a private conversation. On July 1st, twenty-one border communes of Lorraine were added to those in which German had been made the official language. On July 25th, for the first time in the history of the University of Strasbourg, a professor was hissed out of his lecture room. He had said that the Prussians could speak better French than the Alsatians. The most serious demonstration which has occurred in Metz since the annexation, took place on Sunday evening, January 8, 1910, when the police broke up forcibly a concert given by a local society. The newspapers of Metz claimed that this was a private gathering, to which individual invitations had been sent, and was neither public nor political. The police invaded the hall, and requested the audience to disband. When the presiding officer refused, he and the leader of the orchestra were arrested. The audience, after a lively tussle, was expelled from the hall. Immediately a demonstration was planned to be held around the statue of General Ney. A large crowd paraded the city, singing the Sambre-et-Meuse and the Marseillaise. When the police found themselves powerless to stop the procession without bloodshed, they were compelled to call out the troops to clear the streets with fixed bayonets.
These incidents demonstrated the fact that French ideals, French culture, and the French language had been kept alive, and were still the inspiration of the unceasing—and successful—protest of nearly two million people against the Prussian domination. The effervescence was undoubtedly as strong in Alsace-Lorraine "forty years after" as it had been on the morrow of the annexation. But its francophile character was not necessarily the expression of desire for reunion with France. The inhabitants of the "lost provinces" had always been, racially and linguistically, as much German as French. Now that the unexpected has happened, and reunion with France seems probable, many Alsatians are claiming that this has been the unfailing goal of their agitation. But it is not true. It would be a lamentable distortion of fact if any such record were to get into a serious history of the period in which we live.
The political ideal of the Alsatians has been self-government. Their agitation has not been for separation from the German Confederation, but for a place in the German Confederation. A great number of the immigrants who were sent to "germanize" Alsace and Lorraine came to side with the indigenous element in their political demands. If the question of France and things French entered into the struggle, and became the heart of it, two reasons for this can be pointed out: France stood for the realization of the ideals of democracy to the descendants of the Strasbourg heroes of 1793; and the endeavour to stamp out the traces of the former nationality of the inhabitants of the provinces was carried on in a manner so typically and so foolishly Prussian that it kept alive the fire instead of extinguishing it. Persecution never fails to defeat its own ends. For human nature is keen to cherish that which is difficult or dangerous to enjoy.
To understand the Alsace-Lorraine question, from the internal German point of view, it is necessary to explain the political status of these provinces after the conquest, and their relationship to the Empire, in order to show that their continued unrest and unhappiness were not due to a ceaseless and stubborn protest against the Treaty of Frankfort.
When the German Empire was constituted, in 1872, it comprehended twenty-five distinct sovereign kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and free cities, and in a subordinate position, the territory ceded by France, which was made a Reichsland, owned in common by the twenty-five confederated sovereignties. The King of Prussia was made Emperor of the Confederation, and given extensive executive powers. Two assemblies were created to legislate for matters affecting the country as a whole. The Bundesrath is an advisory executive body as well as an upper legislative assembly. It is composed of delegates of the sovereigns of the confederated states. The lower imperial house, or Reichstag, is a popular assembly, whose members are returned by general elections throughout the Empire. In their internal affairs the confederated states are autonomous, and have their own local Parliaments. This scheme, fraught with dangers and seemingly unsurmountable difficulties, has survived; and, thanks to the predominance of Prussia and the genius of two great emperors, the seemingly heterogeneous mass has been moulded into a strong and powerful Empire.
In such an Empire, however, there never has been any place for Alsace-Lorraine. The conquered territory was not a national entity. It had no sovereign, and could not enter into the confederacy on an equal footing with the other twenty-five states. The Germans did not dare, at the time, to give the new member a sovereign, nor could they conjointly undertake its assimilation. Prussia, not willing to risk the strengthening of a south German state by the addition of a million and a half to its population, took upon herself what was the logical task of Baden or Wurtemberg or Bavaria.
So Alsace-Lorraine was an anomaly under the scheme of the organization of the German Empire. During forty years the Reichsland was without representation in the Bundesrath, and had thus had no real voice in the management of imperial affairs. By excluding the "reconquered brethren" from representation in the Bundesrath, Germany failed to win the loyalty of her new subjects. Where petty states with a tithe of her population and wealth have helped in shaping the destinies of the nation, the Reichsland had to feel the humiliation of "taxation without representation." It was useless to point out to the Alsatians that they had their vote in the Reichstag. For the Bundesrath is the power in Germany.