ALSACE-LORRAINE
ante 1871. No more will timid journalists quote the well-wom sentence, "L'annexion de l'Alsace~Lorraine fut un crime; une guerre de revanche en serait un autre." The return of the provinces to France is no annexation but simply a restoration. It requires no plebiscite; it demands no special consultation of the people for its realisation. But, in order that it may be an enduring success, the French people must reckon in advance with certain difficulties created by a generation of German rule in the Reichsland.
The first of these lies in the very strength of the autonomy movement itself which throve on the strong particularist character of the population. Without any of the contemptible Kleinstaaterei of the smaller German principalities, Alsace and Lorraine claimed to represent something different even from the most genial and liberal of the South German States, just as in former times, they stoutly maintained their local patriotism under the French flag. In a word, they were têtes carrées — the Scots of France — and the robustness of their character may be seen in the disproportionate number of generals and statesmen they have given to France. It was this very resoluteness and tenacity which forced the population to adopt a positive policy which could give practical results beyond the mere satisfaction of a protest against Germanisation. The protestataires, without knowing it, were the forerunners of the autonomistes: for the latter did no more than use the protesting sentiment as the motive force behind the specific and attractive political demand for autonomy. This constructive side of life in the Reichsland was largely obscured from the eyes of Europe by the deliberate falsification of news from Alsace and Lorraine in German newspapers, and by the constant emphasis laid on the past and its sorrows by French writers of the Nationalist school. In many a French novel you may see the picture of little citadels of beleaguered French patriots, aloof from the rougher ways of their conquerors, maintaining a glorious unequal conflict with the forces of barbarism. Who that has read Maurice Barrès or René Bazin can fail to share their poignant feelings in contemplating the ruthless attempt to obliterate the well-moulded habits of an old community. Who does not rejoice in the unerring aim by which the barbed shafts of M. Barrès' wit find their target in the grosser ways of the German? There are pages in "Au Service de
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