LIBERATED PROVINCES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20716, 8 November 1930, Page 11

LIBERATED PROVINCES.

LIFE IN ALSACE-LORRAINE. HIGH HOPES DISAPPOINTED. DISCORDS UNDER NEW RULE. BY GORDON S. TROUP. There is a "distressful country" on tho borders of France and Germany—AlsaceLorraine. Its old inhabitants have changed nationality twice in their lifetime, and its history is one of continual changes of hands, in which the people have had no voice. When thn French tro.ops marched in after (he Armistice everywhere tho people received them with wild joy. In tho current phrase of the day, Alsaca and Lorraine had been "liberated." And the gladness was sincere. The German rule had been oppressive and the process of Germanising the people had been carried out with a thoroughness unrelieved by tact. The population, in common with the rest of Germany, had suffered terrible privations during the Allied blockade. The entry of the French troops seemed to symbolise the end of oppression and the end of starvation, and the future seemed bright. A Buffer State.

The history of the ensuing 12 years has been a scries of disappointments, deadlocks and embittered disputes. None of the bright promise of 1918. has been fulfilled yet, and the problems still unsolved are as baffling as ever, with the possible exception of the purely strategic question, which makes the provinces an armed guarantee of the defence of France. France looks on tho eastern provinces very much as older British statesmen looked on Ireland—a potential Achilles' heel. Unfortunately, Germany has long regarded them in exactly the same way. making them just twice as unfortunate as Ireland in that respect. With some reservations, the parallel between the two holds good also with regard to the factors of race, language, class and administration. ,

Religious sentiment is stronger than in almost any other part of France. _ The proportion of "practising" Catholics is higher and the number of Protestants per head of population is two or three time* as great as in the rest of France. Both confessions were recognised and estab lished in France at the time of the Ger man annexation in 1870, and as the same thing was true in Gel-many, 191E found the provinces still with established Churches. France, on tho other hand, had ceased to have a State Church in the anti-clerical upheavals of the beginning of this century. Tho people of Alsace-Lorraine, though eager to become French again, refused to accept a religious revolution that had taken place in their absence against their convictions. They have been allowed to keep their established Churches as a temporary measure, and now- clericals and anticlericals are preparing for an apparently inevitable conflict. For it seems certain that French love of order and centralisation will before long raise the question of conformity with tho " mother country." Confusion of Languages.

Tho language question concerns ; Alsace almost entirely. Most of Lorraine 1 speaks either standard French or a dialect of it fairly easily understood. Alsace, on the other hand, has always possessed a strongly flavoured South German dialect, nearly universally spoken and understood. The French conquerors, to their credit, have in the past never tried to eradicate this speech, although they have, like the early Normans in England, made French the languaga of the elite and of officialdom. The Germans, on the other hand, after the Franco-Prussian War, imposed standard German high and low. Its use in public, whether written or spoken, was compulsory, and French was taught in tho schools only as a foreign languago. Thus, in fifty years of German occupation, French had disappeared very rapidly. And the last twelve years have seen in force methods only one degree less rigorous than those of the preceding regime, calculated to bring tho French language back into its own. The result of all this is that in a typical family in the country, the members over twenty-five years old speak Alsatian and read standard German with ease. Those below that age speak Alsatian in their homes, and some soft of French in school. But, such is " school-French" all the world over, they rarely reach tho point where they dnn read it with any ease or pleasure. Alsatian is too limited in its vocabulary to have a literature worth speaking of, bo that tho world of books is almost closed to the younger generation. The clergy preach mainly in standard German, and so touch mainly the older generation. Allegiance Made to Order. Language has also come to havo an unfortunate social significance. Families of the richer bourgeoisie who could afford to emigrate in 1871 have returned now, creating a group apart which speaks French fluently, and tends to look down on those who do not. They are particularly self-satisfiod, even for bourgeois. Whereupon the communist element, adept at fishing in troubled waters, has made common cause with the Alsatian-speaking peasant and artisan, and shouts for autonomy and the old speech louder than any of them. Strasbourg has at_ present a communist Mayor and corporation, j It is undeniable, too, that French administration has given- plenty of ground for complaint. Compared with the German Civil Service, the French are incompetent, even for civil servants, and they seem to have sent some of their choicest muddlers to Alsace and Lorraine.

With all these provocations, the wonder is that the autonomist movement is not much stronger and more deep-seated than it is. The truth seems to be that the population lias been so often bandied to and fro that, instead of acquiring an intensified national feeling, it, has become profoundly sceptical about the whole business of "nationality" and "patriotism." It has seen them so often made to order, in quick time. The Children's Dilemma. Theso border States might have become the inspired mediators between two great people. But tho potential interpreters are rendered tongue-tied and mute. It is those who are children at the present time who fare worst of all, as, perhaps f this incident will show. It is the 'JThursdav holiday, beside a lake in Alsace. First come a ci;ovvd of students of eight nationalities from an international camp near by. Carefree, they swim in the lake, duck each other, chatter freely in their own language, brazenly in each other's, and come out in the sun to dry. Then comes a women's tramping club typical of the region, stately matrons who retire to the interior of the cafe to drink tea and sing German songs and hymns alternately. Upon their seraphic heels come a party of young priests from a Roman Catholic seminary near by. They hire all the available rowingboats, and wjth remarkable agility despite their robes, career over tho lake in great spirits, shouting to one another in academic French. The last to come are a party of schoolboys, about sixth standard ago, accompanied by their schoolmaster. _ While waiting their turn they stand quietly by, grave and impeccable. When their master gives them, in French, permission .o get into their boats, they pull stoutly away, but not once can they, though afc the perfect age for abandon and J 01 ®'®®' vivre," let themselves go. The threo languages, in their spirits, N have reached perfect equilibrium, utter vocal '".pounce Each of the previous groups presented an element of conscious or unconsojoys fun. In the stolid, good behaviour of those little Alsatians, there was something to make the angels weep.