David Starr Jordan

“ Alsace is German at heart and belongs in the Empire. To abandon Lorraine would be to disgrace the fifty thousand graves of brave Germans who gave their lives to win back the lost provinces and to gain the German Rhine. The international politics of Germany hinge on romantic sentiment.
Moreover, though forty years is a long period in the lifetime of a man, it is but a moment in the history of a race. Alsace lies where races meet. She has been part of Germany, of Austria, of France, of Germany again. ”

“ The whole business of Alsace must be with Germany. Home rule and autonomy within the German Empire might be more acceptable than to return as three minor departments in highly centralized France. All political relations with France are beyond discussion. In so far, German officialism is right. The question of Alsace-Lorraine is an affair of Germany, and for this question no direct or immediate solution is possible, for this is the heart of it. When can Germany give her conquered provinces a freedom her own people have not yet achieved for themselves? ”

“ The greatest evil in our age is war. The most menacing feature of this evil is readiness for war, which makes of peace a perennial farce, and the most widespread factor which makes for war is that form of patriotism which spends itself in distrust and hatred of other nations. It rests on the mediaeval politics which found in war outside, the easiest road to national unity and the surest method of suppression of internal reforms. ”

“ Preparation for war is forced upon the common men by their acquiescence, sometimes by machinery they do not control, but never by their will. Nor can we doubt the assurance of the rulers, on both sides, that they do not want war, and that they will, on either side, in no case take the initiative in attack. The fact is, that modern Europe has no room for war, no stomach for it, no money to pay its cost. ”

“ Throughout both provinces the old bourgeoisie speak French, read French, regard French culture as superior to German, and regret that such culture is in a degree denied to their children. The blending of races and race-interests comes more readily from the bottom of the social scale. It was our experience in Muhlhausen to walk into the Bourse and find three hundred men, — well-to-do Germans to all appearance, — transacting their vociferous business all in French. ”

“ It has turned over the nation to the control of a blind militarism which rides gloriously toward a fall. The treaty of Frankfort was not a treaty of peace. It was devised to keep hatred alive. Its purpose was not to welcome back the Germanic people of Alsace, but to keep Germany unified against France. And thus the question of Alsace-Lorraine has divided Europe into two hopeless alliances, which can accomplish no worthy result, and for whose senseless antagonism there seems to be no rational remedy. ”

“ The vindication of our rights rests for ever open to all and to each one in the form and in the degree our conscience shall dictate. In the moment we quit this hall, the supreme thought we find in the bottom of our hearts is a thought of unutterable attachment to the land from which in violence we are torn. ”

“ Obstacles vanish as men arise to remove them. Alsace and Lorraine have the task to keep alive their local identity, their traditions of culture, their economic prosperity. They must lead in movements which tend toward the reconciliation of France and Germany. They must lend no encouragement to chauvinist or to Pangermanist. The peace society lately formed at Muhlhausen by Jacques Schlumberger and his associates, the Franco-German League, with its many adherents in both nations, — these are all steps in this direction. Alsace-Lorraine should aid in the liberal movements of Germany. ”

“ Even the court of Berlin spoke French in preference to German, and the German mind was profoundly influenced by French methods of expression. The superiority of French culture was taken for granted over Continental Europe, as it is still in Paris. French culture in Alsace was not a veneer, it was an actual accomplishment.
But the theory of Germany for the last forty years is that France is decadent and corrupt, to be avoided by the honest student. Modern culture and modern science are products of German genius. ”

“ The people of these provinces, torn suddenly from France as a result of incidents in which they had no part, held by Germany avowedly not for their own sakes but as appendages of their two strong fortresses, have naturally passed through the gamut of feelings instinctive to peoples conquered in war. ”

“ Some day the presence of Alsace may turn the scale in behalf of German freedom. Some day German science wilfpoint the way forward from Bismarck and Von Moltke to Schiller and Kant. 'When this time comes, this great nation, "the second fatherland" of every cultured man, shall stand for honor and justice, the prophecy of Heine shall come true. ”

“ We should do our best to be good citizens of Alsace, and this will have its weight in Germany, for the German people, outside the military clique, are men like ourselves.'
It is also said that 'Every solution implying war is to be rejected. No definite solution could result from a Franco-German war, by which Alsace would find herself cut into two parts, each to destroy the other. A war, whatever its result, provokes always the desire of revenge and leads to indefinite international disorder, in which the antagonism among different elements would be greatly intensified. ”

“ As to the details of home rule, public opinion divides widely. In some degree this becomes a question of religion. I have tried here to avoid all those phases of the problem which are entangled in German politics, and the 'centrist polities' of Germany hinges on Catholic alliances and demands. Both Alsace and Lorraine are essentially Catholic districts. But here Catholic opinion divides as other opinion does, according to the individual feeling and conscience. Some of the most noted of the leaders of 'Nationalism' are honored as abbes by the Church. ”

“ Our hope is in the change of feeling in Germany, and in the rising demand for local rights and local freedom among the German people in the place of concentrated paternalism.'
'Some of us think that our purposes may be best attained by continuous local agitation as a means of educating Germany. Most of us think a quiet patience better. Agitation only makes it harder to come to mutual understanding.' 'We have grown up under a regime more democratic than Germany — especially Prussia — has ever known. ”

“ As France tried for years to suppress the German language and German culture in Alsace, it becomes Germany's national duty in turn to wean these people from the French. The FrancoPrussian war was begun by Napoleon, with the avowed purpose of seizing the Rhine provinces for France. 'To guard against the repetition of such an offense,' the Pangermanists contend,' we have taken the Rhine valley for Germany. The connection of Elsass-Lothringen with the Empire is the very last word of irrevocability. ”

“ Another error of the Imperial government, it is claimed, was its failure to control the private schools for girls as well as those for boys. It is the women of Alsace-Lorraine who, more than the others, keep alive the traditions of France; a business man may fit his politics to his affairs, a woman never. ”

“ Just now Elsass-Lothringen asks for autonomy, for home rule within the Empire. No man of sagacity expects or hopes to see the region returned to France. It is argued by Germanists, on the other hand, that home rule is demanded not for the good of the people, but because home rule is the custom of the other states. But under German law Elsass-Lothringen is not a state, but imperial territory, 'Reichsland.' This distinction her politicians resent. ”

“ The Government of Germany and of its federated states is 'constitutional and not parliamentary.' The limitations on the executive are set by the constitution itself and not, as in Great Britain, by the changing will of the people, as expressed through their deputies. ”

“ Outside of Strassburg and Metz — even in cities like Colmar and Muhlhausen — the immigres constitute but a small fraction of the population. So far as 'expansion' is concerned, crowded Germany gains nothing by annexation, for the land of Alsace still belongs to the Alsatians. The Germans cannot get a foot of ground unless they buy it. This they could do before 1870, and this they can do in any part of the earth. The Germanization of Strassburg and Metz is scarcely more marked than the Germanization of manufacturing cities outside of Germany—let us say, of Milwaukee, or of Sao Paulo, in Brazil. ”

“ It can imagine an empire in which the Emperor holds authority only by dynastic right. Only as a matter of historic succession is it necessary that he should have kings and dukes and arch-dukes and bishops as his august colleagues and subordinates. ”

“ Turkey has put the theory into practice in Armenia, but Germany is not fitted for the task, especially when dealing with people exactly like her own. To the policy of taking French territory at all it is said that Bismarck was strongly opposed, but yielded to Moltke's insistence on the necessity of retaining Strassburg and Metz, to which, in the military sense, Alsace and Lorraine are but outlying appendages. ”