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Next day I started for the French Riviera. The journey was taken leisurely, with interesting halts at Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle; and, as I reached the hotel in Paris, a telegram was handed me ``Your man in Alsace-Lorraine is free. It was evident that the chancellor had felt better and had thought more leniently of the matter, and I had never another difficulty of the sort during the remainder of my stay.
The Chancellor then hurried to Donaueschingen, arriving a few hours before the departure of the Emperor; and a subsequent order of the Emperor to General von Deimling to see to it that the military officers did not overstep their authority and directing him to investigate the occurrences and take measures to punish all guilty parties, somewhat quieted the nation and caused the two highest civil officials of Alsace-Lorraine to withdraw their resignations.
The miserable failure of the Germans in Southwest Africa, their inconclusive war with the Herreros, and the absolute break-down of Prussian methods with the natives, is scarcely more typical than the failure in Alsace-Lorraine and Poland. The Prussian belief in sand-paper as an emollient must be by now rudely shaken. At last a constitution has been given the two conquered provinces.
Yet of late years to anticipate somewhat the course of events Germany has made two important concessions to Alsace-Lorraine. The first was the abrogation of the so-called "Dictator-Paragraph," which was part of the law for administering the new provinces after the war of 1870.
"Baron de Carjorac? Do you mean the French Minister of the Interior, the President of the Board of National Defences, Miss Lorne that enthusiastic old patriot, that rabid old spitfire, whose one dream is the wresting back of Alsace-Lorraine, the driving of the hated Germans into the sea? Do you mean that ripping old firebrand?" "Yes.
It was planned to include the Saar Valley under the term "Alsace-Lorraine" because it had been part of Alsace-Lorraine in 1814, though it had been detached in 1815, and was no part of the territory at the close of the Franco-Prussian war. The official French formula for annexing the Saar was to subsume it under "Alsace-Lorraine" meaning the Alsace-Lorraine of 1814-1815.
A tyrannical autocracy, led by the Great Elector, Frederick the Great, and Bismarck, produced from this welter of discord the astonishing results of to-day. We have to-day, in an area of 208,780 square miles, 5,604 square miles representing the lately conquered territory of Alsace-Lorraine, a population of 64,903,423, of whom 1,028,560 are subjects of foreign powers.
He said that Bismarck was very kind personally to Thiers during the terrible negotiations; that if Bismarck could have had his way he would have asked a larger indemnity, say, seven milliards, and would have left Alsace-Lorraine to France; that France would gladly have paid a much larger sum than five milliards if she could have retained Alsace- Lorraine; that Bismarck would have made concessions; but that ``Molkt'' would not.
If Germany to-day, and we knew it, concluded peace, she would lose Alsace-Lorraine and her military superiority on land; but we, with our territory, would have to pay the Italians, Serbians, and Roumanians for their part in the war.
All great intellectual currents have left their mark on the people of Alsace-Lorraine; and so they have been destined to play the part of mediator between different times and different peoples; and the East and the West, the past and the present, meet here and join hands.
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