THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1917. ALSACE AND LORRAINE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16657, 29 September 1917, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1917. ALSACE AND LORRAINE.

In his speech at a war aims meeting nt Leeds, Mr. Asquith tested the claim for peace on the basis of the status quo by the case of Alsace. When Bethnmnn-Hollweg spoke of " making it a draw" he meant that Germany should retain Alsace and Lorraine. When German Socialists demand peace " without annexations" they have tho same intention of trampling upon the historic traditions and aspiiations of the people of the despoiled French Provinces. Alsace and Lorraine are tho chief prizes of Prussian militarism, the most valuable booty of the few fatal years when Europe passively permitted Prussia to defeat and rob Denmark and France. In no way could Europe more effectively show its abhorrence of the outrage of 1871 than by insisting on tho restoration of the two provinces then torn from France, and no other condition in the settlement would more clearly vindicate the moral authority of right against the Prussian doctrine of force. The argument does not end here. Just and desirable as it would be to strip the spoiler of his gains and to restore them to the despoiled, the time has happily passed v hen Europe will consent to treat •■■•/ small people as a pawn in &e intviviional game. Franco claims AJsait and Lorraine, not so much becuise they were French, as because they are French, and Britain and America support her claim as a matter of justice to the two provinces, not because they wish to diminish Germany, and not principally because they wish to compensate France for the injustice of 1871.

The view of France is that the liberation of Alsace and Lorraine is a sacred obligation she owes, not to herself, but to the lost provinces, which were alienated against their will, and which have never ceased to hope and work for a' day of freedom and reunion. When the French National Assembly met at Bordeaux before accepting the terms imposed by Germany in 1871 the members for Alsace and Lorraine placed before it a unanimous declaration affirming the determination of ,their electors to remain French. They called upon France not to consent, and upon Europe not to sanction the alienation of the provinces. France was compelled to buy peace at the German price, but the provinces remained true to their vow.« For 20 years Alsatian deputies were returned to the Reichstag on the strength of a simple declaration that they would protest against the annexation. Censorship, suppression, persecution, wholesale deportations and a flood of German immigrants left the Alsatians unchanged in their determination. In the course of years the form, although not the intention, of their political activities changed. They came to demand emancipation from Berlin and an autonomy equal to that enjoyed by the Federal States in the German Empire. As the member for Colmar, M. Jacques Preiss, declared in the Reichstag in 1895 " while demanding respect for their good right the people of Alsace and Lorraine do not imagine that France accepts as irrevocable the blow she has received or her defeat; they do not believe she has forgotten what has been torn from her." Alsatians were conscripted into the German Army, but they returned to Alsace more anti-German than ever. German school teachers were sent to instil pan-Germanism into Alsatian children, but they failed. When the war broke out 33,000 Alsatians crossed the frontier at imminent risk to join the French Army.

When Bismarck took Alsaco and Lorraine he did not trouble to pretend that they were not French in nationality and in spirit. v Until a few months ago no German ever suggested that they were anything but French. At the time of the Zabern affair early in 1914, the Berlin prefect of police made the significant declaration that "in Alsace and Lorraine German troops are in enemy country." When war broke out this principle was adopted. On the eve of mobilisation thousands of Alsatians were arrested and interned in Germany, court-martials were established everywhere, and prisons were filled to overflowing. Summary executions were common and whole villages where there was no fighting were burned to terrorise the inhabitants. All this shows the failure of the attempt to Germanise the provinces which remained loyal to France, with whom they have a moral, intellectual, and artistic affinity as well as an historical association. The crime of 1871 would be condoned and Burpassed if the French of Alsace and Lorraine were to be left under a bondage they detest, and kept from a free union with the people of their own blood whom they regard with a passion exalted by many years of sorrow and alienation*