COLONIST. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1918. ALSACE-LORRAINE AND PEACE.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14894, 17 October 1918, Page 4

COLONIST. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1918. ALSACE-LORRAINE AND PEACE.

Major Haldane Macfall, the author of that compelling book "Germany at Bay/ has written: another which recent events invest with special interest. It is entitled "Beware of the Germans' Peace," which caption indicates its scope and nature. One of the' most interesting chapters has to do with Alsace-Lorraine, and the necessity for their being restored to France as part of the peace arrangement, as well for the -assurance of the future peace of the world as to right"the wrong of '71. Major Macfall has hard things to say about the shortsightedness of the British diplomacy which permitted this wrong to be perpetrated without protest, for without'Alsace-Lorraine Germany could not have fought us for three months. He vigorously assails the opinion expressed in certain quarters that the French insistence upon the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine is a sentiment which, while natural and admirable, is hardly worth prolonging the war to realise. Alsace-Lorraine is a French sentiment, and a very intense one, but it is more than that. It is a matter of life and death to France that the provinces stolen from her should he restored. The reason is that the iron ore of Lorraine is the best iron for making steel, and Lorraine supplies three out of every four tons of Germany's steel. As long as the German holds Alsace-Lorraine, not only has he an ideal jumping-off ground 'west of the Rhine for attacking France under every advantage, but he holds the French iron wherewith alone he can destroy the French armies—and without which the French armies cannot destroy him. It is with the iron of Lorraine that the German fires three out of four shells into the Allied trenches and devastates the land, and blots out the lives of. our men. 'it is with the iron of France rs Lorraine that he can batter down the French democracy. It is with the iron of Lorraine that he has fought this vast war. It is the iron of Lorraine vthat enabled the beaten German armies to entrench for three years by gunning their defence. It is the iron of Lorraine that scatters death from the-night sky in London streets when the German Iron Cross heroes slay women and children. It is the iron of Lorraine that sends the submarine under the deep and enables German piracy to sink defenceless folk and drown neutrals with impunity. It is with the iron of Lorraine that he can gun his crimes, and. : intends to destroy that sublime and chivalrous! democracy of France that stand ß for all that he hates, that France that he would compel to speak the.German tongue. With the German in Lorraine, France cannot sleep except with the. rifle at ; her side. Peace with Germany in Alsace-Lor-raine means the conquest of France by German commerce as surely as war means her assailing. But with France in Alsace-Lorraine the German octopus in the steel-yards would have its tentacles amputated, just as in war the 1 weight of metal wou,ld then be on the French side. France has no designs on the dominion of the world; Germany lives for- no other design. France, if she sign a peace with Germany with the German flag still flying in AlsaceLorraine, will have signed her death warrant. Alsace-Lorraine means life or death to France^ as its loss to the Germans means the heaviest blow to Germany's war ambitions and to her dream of world domination. It is weighted with vast issue to America and Britain, as to the rest of the civilised world, which is to say that it means all our future safety or our future punishment. If Alsace-Lorraine remain German, then all peace talk, all peace treaties, are futile and a sham for our undoing. The peace we all seek and hope for—the democratic peace—cannot be, so long as the German possesses the Frenchman's iron ore in France's Lorraine. And he who for one moment thinks that the German will surrender this mighty weapon that he tore; from France by force, he who is so fatuous to believe that the German will surrender Alsace-Lorraine until he is crushed, is living in a fool's paradise of vague ideals that are as unsubstantial as empty nothingness. Happily for the world the day has passed when a peace leaving Germany in possession of the stolen provinces was even remotely possible. Germany has now been told—in less explicit terms that we should like to have seen, but still plainly—that when she wants peace^she must surrender unconditionally, and she has a

very fair idea of thd penalties which will be imposed upon her. Prominent in the list is the resoration of AlsaceLorraine to outraged France.

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