The greatest effort during the past few years has been made in the schools to influence the minds of the growing generation against the "souvenir de France" and to impress upon the Alsatians what good fortune had come to them to be born German citizens.
Among the boys, the influence of this teaching has been such that over twenty-two thousand fled from home during the period of 1900–1913 to enlist in the Foreign Legion of the French Army. The campaign of the German newspapers in Alsace-Lorraine, and, in fact, throughout Germany, was redoubled in 1911. Parents were warned of the horrible treatment accorded to the poor boys who were misguided enough to throw away their citizenship, and go to be killed in Africa under the French flag. The result of this campaign was that the Foreign Legion received a larger number of Alsatians in 1912 than had enlisted during a single year since 1871!
Among the girls, the German educational system flattered itself that it could completely change the sentiments of a child, especially in the boarding-schools. Last year the Empress of Germany visited a girls' school near Metz, which is one of the best German schools in the Reichsland. As she was leaving, she told the children that she wanted to give them something. What did they want? The answer was not sweets or cake, but that they might be taught a little French!
Since 1910, the German war budget has carried successively larger items for the strengthening of forts and the building of barracks in Metz, Colmar, Mulhouse, Strasbourg, Neuf-Brisach, Bischwiller, Wissembourg, Mohrange, Sarrebourg, Sarreguemines, Saarbruck, Thionville, Molsheim, and Saverne. The former French provinces have been flooded with garrisons, and have been treated just as they were treated forty years ago. The insufferable spirit of militarism, and the arrogance of the Prussian officers in Alsatian towns, have served to turn against the Empire many thousands whom another policy might have won. For it must be remembered that by no means all the inhabitants of the Reichsland have been by birth and by home training French sympathizers. Instead of crushing out the "souvenir de France," the Prussian civil and military officials have caused it to be born in many a soul which was by nature German.
The most notorious instance of military arrogance occurred in the autumn of 1913 in Saverne. Lieutenant von Forstner, who was passing in review cases of discipline, had before him a soldier who had stabbed an Alsatian, and had been sentenced to two months' imprisonment. "Two months on account of an Alsatian blackguard!" he cried. "I would have given you ten marks for your trouble." The story spread, and the town, tired of the attitude of its garrison, began in turn to show its contempt for the Kaiser's soldiers. Windows in von Forstner's house were broken. Every time officers or soldiers appeared on the streets they were hooted. Saverne was put under martial law. Threats were made to fire upon the citizens. One day Lieutenant von Forstner struck a lame shoemaker across the forehead with his sword. The affair had gone so far that public sentiment in Germany demanded some action. Instead of adequately punishing von Forstner and other officers, who had so maddened the civil population against them, the German military authorities gave the guilty officers nominal sentences, and withdrew the garrison.
All these events had a tremendous repercussion in France. It is impossible to exaggerate the ill-feeling aroused on both sides of the Rhine, in Germany, in Alsace-Lorraine, and in France by the persecutions in the Reichsland. Only one who knows intimately the French can appreciate their feeling—or share it—over the Zislin and Hansi trials, the Saverne affair, the suppression of the Souvenir Français, the Lorraine Sportive and other organizations, and the campaign against the Foreign Legion. It has given the French soldiers in the present war something to fight for which is as sacred to them as the defence of French soil. The power of this sentiment is indicated by the invasion of Alsace, the battle of Altkirk, and the occupation of Mulhouse at the beginning of August. The French could not be held back from this wild dash. Strategy was powerless in the face of the sentiment of a national army.
The Alsatian leaders themselves have seen the peril to the peace of Europe of the German attitude towards their country. They did not want France drawn into a war for their liberation. They were alarmed over the possibility of this, and desired it to be understood that their agitation had nothing international in it. The attitude of all the anti-Prussian parties may be summed up in the words of Herr Wolff, leader of the Government Liberal party, who declared that "all the inhabitants of the Reichsland had as their political ambition was only the elevation of Alsace-Lorraine to the rank of an independent and federated state, like the other twenty-five component parts of the German Empire." Their sincerity and their desire to preserve peace is proved by the motion presented by the leaders of four of the political groups in the Reichsland, which was voted on May 6, 1912, without discussion, by the Landtag:
"The Chamber invites the Statthalter to instruct the representatives of Alsace-Lorraine in the Bundesrath to use all the force they possess against the idea of a war between Germany and France, and to influence the Bundesrath to examine the ways which might possibly lead to a rapprochement between France and Germany, which rapprochement will furnish the means of putting an end to the race of armaments."
The mismanagement of the Reichsland has done more than prevent the harmonious union of the former French provinces with Germany. It has had an effect, the influence of which cannot be exaggerated, upon nourishing the hopes of revenge of France, and the resentment against the amputation of 1870. On neither side of the Vosges has the wound healed. The same folly which has kept alive a Polish question in eastern Prussia for one hundred and twenty-five years, has not failed to make impossible the prussianizing of Alsace and Lorraine. The Prussian has never understood how to win the confidence of others. There has been no Rome in his political vision. As for conceptions of toleration, of kindness, and of love, they are non-existent in Prussian officialdom. Nietzsche revealed the character of the Prussian in his development of the idea of the übermensch. The ideal of perfect manhood is the imposition of one will on another will by force. Mercy and pity, according to Nietzsche, were signs of weakness, the symbols of the slave.
Under the circumstances, then, we are compelled after forty-five years to revise our estimate of Bismarck's sagacity. His genius was limited by the narrow horizon of his own age. He did not see that the future Germany needed other things that France could give far more than she needed Alsace and Lorraine. In posterity, Bismarck would have had a greater place had he, in the last minutes of the transactions at Versailles, given back Alsace and Lorraine to France, waived the war indemnity, and asked in return Algeria or other French colonies.
But would it have been different under Germany in the French colonies? A Herrero, employed in the Johannesburg mines, wrote his brother in German South-West Africa: "The country of the English is truly a good country. Even if your superior is present, he doesn't strike you, and if he strikes you and goes thus beyond legal limits, he is punished like anyone else."
CHAPTER II
THE "WELTPOLITIK" OF GERMANY
When the transrhenane provinces of the old German Empire were added to France in the eighteenth century, the assimilation of these territories was a far different proposition from their refusion into the mould of a new German Empire in 1871. In the first place, the old German Empire was a mediæval institution which, in the evolution of modern Europe, was decaying. Alsace and Lorraine were not taken away from a political organism of which they were a vital part. The ties severed were purely dynastic. In the second place, the consciousness of national life was awakened in Alsace and Lorraine during the time that they were under French rule, and because they shared in the great movement of the birth of democracy following the French Revolution.
France, then, by the Treaty of Frankfort, believed that she had been robbed of a portion of her national territory. The people of the annexed provinces, as was clearly shown by the statement of their representatives at Bordeaux, did not desire to enter the German Confederation.