There might have been one other means—and one which the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine favored—of founding there a neutral territory similar to Belgium and Switzerland. There would then have been a chain of neutral states from the North Sea to the Swiss Alps, which would have made it impossible for us to attack France by land, because we are accustomed to respect treaties and neutrality, and because we should have been separated from France by this strip of land between us. France would have received a protecting armor against us, but nothing would have prevented her from occasionally sending her fleet with troops to our coast—a plan she had under consideration during the last war, although she did not execute it—or from landing her armies with her allies, and entering Germany from there. France would have received a protecting armor against us, but we should have been without protection by sea, as long as our navy did not equal the French. This was one objection, although one of only secondary importance. The chief reason was that neutrality can only be maintained when the inhabitants are determined to preserve an independent and neutral position, and to defend it by force of arms, if need be. That is what both Belgium and Switzerland have done. As far as we were concerned in the last war no action on their part would have been necessary, but it is a fact that both these countries maintained their neutrality. Both are determined to remain neutral commonwealths. This supposition would not have been true, in the immediate future, for the neutrality newly to be established in Alsace and Lorraine. On the contrary, it is to be expected that the strong French elements, which are going to survive in the country for a long while, and whose interests, sympathies, and memories are connected with France, would have induced the people to unite with France in the case of another Franco-German war, no matter who their sovereign might be. The neutrality of Alsace-Lorraine, therefore, would have been merely a sham, harmful to us and helpful to France. Nothing was left, therefore, but to bring both these countries with their strong fortresses completely under German control. It was our purpose to establish them as a powerful glacis in Germany's defence against France, and to move the starting point of a possible French attack several days' marches farther back, if France, having regained her strength or won allies, should again throw down the gauntlet to us.

The chief obstacle to the realization of this idea, which was to satisfy the incontestable demands of our safety, was found in the opposition of the inhabitants themselves, who did not wish to be separated from France. It is not my duty here to inquire into the causes which made it possible for a thoroughly German community to become so deeply attached to a country speaking a different tongue and possessing a government which was not always kind and considerate. To a great extent this may have been due to the fact that all those qualities which distinguish the Germans from the French are found to such a high degree in Alsace-Lorraine, that the inhabitants of this country formed—I may say it without fear of seeming presumption—an aristocracy in France as regards proficiency and exactness. They were better qualified for service, and more reliable in office. The substitutes in the army, the gendarmes, and the civil officers were from Alsace-Lorraine in numbers entirely out of proportion to the population of these provinces. There were one and one half million Germans who knew how to make use of these virtues among a people who have other virtues but who are lacking in these particular ones. Thanks to their excellence they enjoyed a favored position, which made them unmindful of many legal iniquities. It is, moreover, characteristic of the Germans that every tribe lays claim to some kind of superiority, especially over its immediate neighbors. As long as the people of Alsace and Lorraine were French, Paris with its splendor and the grandeur of a united France stood behind them; they could meet their fellow Germans with the consciousness that Paris was theirs, and thus find a reason for their sense of exclusive superiority. I do not wish to discuss further the reasons why everyone attaches himself more readily to a big political system which gives scope to his abilities, than to a divided, albeit related, nation, such as existed formerly on this side of the Rhine, in so far as the Alsatians were concerned. The fact is that such disinclination existed, and that it is our duty to overcome it by patience. We have, it seems to me, many means at our disposal. We Germans are accustomed to govern more benevolently, sometimes more awkwardly—but in the long tun really more benevolently and humanely, than the French statesmen. This is a merit of the German character which will soon appeal to the Alsatian heart and become manifest. We are, moreover, able to grant the inhabitants a far greater degree of communal and individual freedom than the French institutions and traditions ever permitted.

If we watch the present movement in Paris (the Commune), we shall find, what is true of every movement possessing the least endurance, that it contains at bottom a grain of sense in spite of all the unreasonable motives which attach to it, influencing its individual partisans. Without this no movement can attain even that degree of force which the Commune exercises at present. This grain of sense—I do not know how many people believe in it, but surely the most intelligent and best who at present are fighting against their countrymen do believe in it—is, to put it briefly, the German municipal government. If the Commune possessed this, then the better element of its supporters—I do not say all—would be satisfied. We must differentiate according to the facts. The militia of the usurpers consists largely of people who have nothing to lose. There are in a city of two million inhabitants many so-called "repris de justice," or as we should say "people under police supervision," who are spending in Paris the interval between two terms in prison. They are congregating in the city in considerable numbers and are ready to serve disorder and pillage wherever it may be. It is these people who gave to the movement, before we had scrutinized its theoretical aims, the occasionally prominent character which seemed to threaten civilization, and which, in the interest of humanity, I now hope has been overcome. It is, of course, quite possible that it may recur.

In addition to this flotsam, which is found in large masses in every big city, the militia which I mentioned consists of many adherents of an international European republic. I have been told the figures with which the foreign nations are there represented, but I remember only that almost eight thousand Englishmen are said to be in Paris for the sake of seeing the realization of their plans. I assume that these so-called Englishmen are largely Irish Fenians. And then there are many Belgians, Poles, adherents of Garibaldi, and Italians. They are people who really do not care much for the "Commune" and French liberty. They expect something else, and they were, of course, not meant, when I said that there is a grain of sense in every movement.

The needs and wishes of the large French communities are thoroughly justified, considering not only their own political past, which grants them a very moderate amount of freedom, but also the tradition of the French statesmen who are offering to the cities their very best possible compromise with municipal freedom. The inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine have felt these needs most forcefully owing to their German character, which is stronger than the French character in its demands for individual and municipal independence. Personally I am convinced that we can grant the people of Alsace and Lorraine, at the very start, a freer scope in self government without endangering the empire as a whole. Gradually this will be broadened until it approaches the ideal, when every individual and every community possesses as much freedom as is at all compatible with the order of the State as a whole. I consider it the duty of reasonable statesmanship to try to reach this goal or to come as near to it as possible. And this is much easier, with our present German institutions, than it will ever be in France with the French character and the French centralized system of government. I believe, therefore, that, with German patience and benevolence, we shall succeed in winning the men of Alsace and Lorraine—perhaps in a briefer space of time than people today expect.

But there will always be some residuary elements, rooted with every personal memory in France and too old to be transplanted, or necessarily connected with France by material interests. For them there will be no compensation for the broken French bonds, or at least none for some time to come. We must, therefore, not permit ourselves to believe that the goal is in sight, and that Alsace will soon be as intensely German in feeling as Thuringia. On the other hand, we need not give up the hope of living to see the realization of our plans provided we fulfill the time generally allotted to man.

The problem of how to approach this task, gentlemen, will now primarily concern you. What should be the form of our immediate procedure? for it should surely not bind us irrevocably for all the future. I would ask you not to deliberate as if you were to create something that will hold good for eternity. Do not endeavor to form a definite idea of the future as you may think it should be after the lapse of several decades. No man's foresight, I hold, can reach as far as that. The conditions are abnormal; they had to be so—our entire task was so—not only as regards the mode of taking possession of Alsace, but also as regards the present owners. An alliance of sovereign princes and free cities making a conquest which it is compelled to keep for its own protection, and which is, therefore, held in joint possession, is very rare in history. It is in fact, I believe, unique, if we disregard a few ventures by some Swiss cantons, which after all did not intend to assimilate the countries which they had jointly conquered, but rather to manage them as common provinces in the interest of the conquerors. Considering, therefore, the abnormal conditions and our abnormal task, we are most especially called upon to guard against overestimating the perspicacity in human affairs of even the most far sighted politicians. I for one do not feel capable of foretelling with certainty what the conditions in Alsace-Lorraine will be three years hence. To do this one would need an eye capable of piercing the future. Everything depends on factors whose development, conduct, and good will are beyond our power of regulation. What we are proposing to you is merely an attempt to find the right beginning of a road, the end of which we shall know only when we have been taught the necessary lessons by actual experience with the conditions of the future. Let me ask you, therefore, to follow at first the same empirical road which the governments have followed, and to take conditions as they are, and not as we may wish they should be. If one has nothing better to put in the place of something that one does not entirely like, one had better, I believe, let matters take their own course, and rest satisfied at first with conditions as they are. As a matter of fact the allied governments have jointly taken these countries, while their common possession and common administration, although constituting an established premise, may be modified in future by our own necessities and the needs of the people of Alsace and Lorraine. As regards the definite form which the proposition may take some day, I sincerely urge you to follow the lead of the governments and to defer your judgment. If you are bolder than we are in prejudging what will happen, we shall gladly meet your wishes, since we must work together. The caution with which I have announced to you the convictions of the allied governments, and with which these governments have formed their convictions, is an indication to you of our willingness to be set right, if you should offer us a better plan, especially if experience—even a short experience—should have proved it to be a better plan.

When I announce to you our willingness to work hand in hand with you, you are, I am sure, equally ready to join us in exercising German patience and German love toward all, and especially toward our new countrymen, and in endeavoring to discover, and finally to reach, the right goal.

WE SHALL NEVER GO TO CANOSSA!

May 14, 1872