The fact that Alsace-Lorraine was German up to the seventeenth century,
and inhabited by German stock, cannot be brought forward today, after
more than 200 years, to justify the retaking of those provinces by the
Germans. The whole world would be in a state of continual warfare if
nations claimed provinces or States that belonged to them once upon a
time. Richelieu's idea was that the Rhine was the natural and
geographical frontier between France and Germany, and the war was
undertaken to carry out that plan. Since then the inhabitants have
become French, and the attempts to re-Germanize them have proved futile.
Prof. Francke may well doubt if the acquisition of these provinces was a
fortunate thing for Germany. It was undoubtedly the most unfortunate
thing not only for Germany but for France and the rest of Europe, for it
kept open a wound which might have been healed either by a return of the
lost provinces, with or without compensation, or by granting them
autonomy, or, better still, by leaving it to the inhabitants to choose
for themselves, as France did with Nice and Savoy.
The ruthless methods of a Bismarck are no longer of this age.
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