United States or Yemen ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the light of a passage like this, from the most distinguished representative of German humanism, it is easier to grasp the failure of educated Germany to understand the sequel of the South African War, or the aspirations of the Slav peoples, or to stigmatise the folly of their statesmen in Poland, Denmark, Alsace-Lorraine, and Belgium.
She is largely responsible for the murder of a great civilized nation. She has wrested Silesia from Austria. She has taken Hanover from its legitimate rulers. She has taken Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark, Alsace-Lorraine from France.
All of the Allies have borne the thrusting and boasting of Germany with exemplary patience for half a century; England gave her Heligoland and stood out of the way of her colonial expansion, Italy was a happy hunting ground for her business enterprise, France had come near resignation on the score of Alsace-Lorraine.
Bismarck fed the youthful nation upon a diet of blood and iron, and its appetite has grown by what it fed on. The success of 1870 turned the nation's head; the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine gave it the first taste of conquest. Germany began to imagine that German character and German culture possessed some magical and unique quality which would alone account for this success.
In 1905 there were 37,646,852 Protestants and 22,109,644 Catholics in Germany, the Roman Catholics being in a majority in Baden, Bavaria, and Alsace-Lorraine. In the past these religious differences have entailed all the most repulsive features of war, waged to the point of extermination. "Lieber Rom als Liberal," is still a punning war-cry marking the dislike of Rome and the fear of Socialism.
Let us, before discussing the political embarrassment to strategy produced by these four widely distant and quite separate areas, translate the diagram in the terms of a sketch map. On the following sketch map, Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, East Prussia, and Silesia are shaded, as were the four corners of the diagram. No. 1 is Belgium, 2 is East Prussia, 3 is Alsace-Lorraine, 4 is Silesia.
Jinks was moving out of Montenegro and Blinks was foregoing all claims to Polish Prussia; Jinks was offering Alsace-Lorraine to Blinks, and Blinks in a fit of chivalrous enthusiasm was refusing to take it. They were disbanding troops, blowing up fortresses, sinking their warships and offering indemnities which they both refused to take.
The German Crown Prince led an army farther east, advancing toward the Meuse. The Crown Prince of Bavaria commanded the German forces farther south toward Nancy, and General von Heeringen was engaged in repulsing French attacks on Alsace-Lorraine, in the region of the Vosges mountains, where the French had met with early successes.
Two Immediate evacuation of invaded countries; Belgium, France, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, so ordered as to be completed within fifteen days from the signature of the armistice. German troops which have not left the above mentioned territories within the period fixed will become prisoners of war.
We have seen that the disposition of the French armies at the moment when the shock was being delivered through Belgium involved along the frontiers of Alsace-Lorraine the presence of considerable forces. These, once the operative corner had taken the shock, formed part of the mass of manoeuvre, and were destined in large part to swing up in aid of the men retreating from the Sambre.
Word Of The Day