Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Fourteen Points, announced; affirmative guaranty in; insufficient as programme; text. France, Alsace-Lorraine; restoration. See also Clemenceau; French alliance; Great Powers. Freedom of the seas, in Fourteen Points.
They are universal principles, applicable to all the Powers. “Prussian militarism” must be crushed everywhere, in Great Britain as well as in Germany, in Finland as well as in Alsace-Lorraine, in Italy as well as in Austria. Nationalities must be liberated everywhere, the Ruthenians as well as the Poles, the Jews as well as the Croatians.
The Southern States threw themselves into the arms of Prussia; France was crushed, and Alsace-Lorraine annexed; the German Empire was proclaimed, and modern Germany came into being. There had been no foreigner to expel from German soil, but Bismarck found that an attack upon France served his purpose equally well.
One day I received a letter from a young man who stated his case as follows: He had left his native town in Alsace-Lorraine just before arriving at the military age; had gone to the United States; had remained there, not long enough to learn English, but just long enough to obtain naturalization; and had then lost no time in returning to his native town.
"This means war. The duke will never swallow such an insult." "War! It looks as if you and I, Baron, shall not accompany the king of Prussia into Alsace-Lorraine. We shall have entertainment at home." "This is horrible!" "The devil of a muddle!" "But what possessed the prince to blunder like this?" "The prince really is not to blame. Our king, Baron, is a young colt.
In the chapter on the affair at Zabern, something will be seen of the attitude of the troops toward the civil population. At the outbreak of the war several of the deputies, sitting in the Reichstag as members from Alsace-Lorraine, crossed the frontier and joined the French army.
Germany produced before the War about 190,000,000 tons of coal; in 1913 191,500,000. The consumption of these mines themselves was about a tenth, 19,000,000 tons, whilst for exportation were 83,500,000 tons, and for internal consumption were 139,000,000. Now Germany has lost, and justly, Alsace-Lorraine, 3,800,000 tons. She has lost, and it was not just, the Saar, 13,200,000 tons.
For a hundred reasons Silesia must be saved. Now put yourself in the position of the men who must make a decision between these four outliers Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, East Prussia, and Silesia and understand the hesitation such divergent aims impose upon them.
It became known that this young officer, while instructing his men, had insulted the French flag and had called the Alsatian recruits Wackes, a nick-name meaning "square-head," and frequently used by the people of Alsace-Lorraine in a jocular way, but hotly resented by them if used towards them by others.
French chauvinism had waxed and waned, but it was never extinguished. After 1870 it centred not only about Alsace-Lorraine, but also about the colonial expansion which took from that date a new lease of life in France, as it had done in England after the loss of the American colonies. Directly encouraged by Bismarck, France annexed Tunis in 1881.
Word Of The Day