THE NEW EUROPE
French departments: for it is clear that Metz and Nancy have far more in common than Metz and Strasbourg. But, in this proceeding, it will probably be found that the German subdivision of each department may profitably be maintained; though, on the other hand, the whole question will be governed by the number of suitable officials who are available. Suitability in this case is largely a question of language. When we remember that, even after five generations under French government, four-fifths of Alsace and more than one-quarter of Lorraine still spoke German dialects — a tribute, by the way, to the large tolerance of the French people! — though their political outlook and ways of thought were entirely French, it will readily be understood that the last forty years under German rule have not increased the number either of French-speaking citizens or officials. The bi-lingual official is therefore a necessity. And not only the bi-lingual official, but also the teacher in whose hands the happiness of the immediate future of the three new departments will so largely lie. Germany made the characteristic blunder of thinking that the use of French in Lorraine and in Upper Alsace could be stamped out by force: and the only result was that the elected representatives in the Landesausschuss at Strasbourg — no honest man could call it a Parliament — repeatedly and unanimously demanded the universal and compulsory teaching of French in the elementary schools. The French people know their kith and kin of the Rhine provinces too well to ignore their mixed culture by attempting to enforce the immediate and universal use of French.
There are many problems which do, indeed, demand quelque doigté in those who would solve them. Questions such as industrial insurance, adjustments of taxation, tobacco monopoly, rates of pay and salaries, regulations for practice in law, in medicine, in pharmacy, etc., touch the day-to-day life of everybody, and rude changes must be avoided. But a more formidable task still remains. The question which rent France in two for a generation and still excites a good deal of heat has never even been raised in Alsace-Lorraine; and thus the great anti-clerical Republic is faced with the task of making a habitable place in her household for two provinces still in communion with Rome. No doubt M. Briand and the partisans of l'apaisement have done much to prepare the public
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