Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 19, 2025
No one who has not stayed in Alsace among Alsatians can realize the intense clinging to France among the people, nor the sacrifices made to retain their nationality. And it is well the true state of feeling throughout the annexed territory should be known outside its limits.
"He used to be a Boy Scout," said Archer. "Did you everr hearr of them?" But Florette only shook her head again and stared. Ever since the war began she had lived under the shadow of the big prison camp. Many of her friends and townspeople, Alsatians loyal still to France, were held there among the growing horde of foreigners. Never had she heard of any one escaping.
I could hardly believe that they had, for I had studied conditions in the "lost provinces" before the war. Still, the Wilhelmstrasse propaganda was convincing millions that the Alsatians received the French very coldly when they invaded the province to Mulhouse, and that they greeted the German troops most heartily when they drove back the invader.
To accomplish this, a vigorous application of cudgels was required, and some broken pates were the consequence of resistance; but the attack was perfectly successful; the myrmidons and Alsatians were routed, and the 'prentices remained masters of the field, and captors of a prisoner.
The state of affairs in Alsace-Lorraine is one of Germany's moat carefully hidden secrets. In the first months of the war I heard so much talk in Germany talk based upon articles in the Press of how the Alsatians, like the rest of the Kaiser's subjects, "rushed to the defence of the Fatherland," that I was filled with curiosity to go and see for myself if they had suddenly changed.
They also declared that the Poles, Danes, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Alsatians, and Serbs should be freed from the tyrannous governments which now enslaved them.
Thus the banks of the Mississippi became known on the Rhine, a goodly part of our Louisiana Creoles received a German tincture, and the father and the aunt of Suzanne and Françoise were not the only Alsatians we shall meet in these wild stories of wild times in Louisiana. Translator. Royalist refugees of '93.
Certainly it looked serious the next day when Sir Robert Douglas had had the greatest difficulty in hindering a hand-to-hand fight between the Scots and Alsatians for a strip of meadow land for pasture for their horses; when a few loaves of black bread were all that could be obtained from one village, and in another there had been a fray with the peasants, resulting in blows by way of payment for a lean cow and calf and four sheep.
It rejoices that this self-determination has now been assured to the Jugo-Slavs, Czecho-Slovaks, Alsatians and Lorrainers, as well as to the Finns, Poles, Ukrainians, and now to the Arabs. This is not enough and it is not impartial.
"Sie sprechen Deutsch!" I exclaimed in astonishment. "Ja, ich kann nicht anders um so mehr schade!" he replied mournfully. He was an Alsatian "volunteer," he explained, having deserted for the French side at an opportune moment. It was odd to hear him declaiming against the Germans in their own language. It is a way the Alsatians have. Treitschke once lamented the fact.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking