Part 7

The French government from 1648 to 1789 was tender to the traditions of the conquered territory. Except for the prescription of French in the courts, no restrictions were put on the use of the German language, although French naturally made rapid progress in the towns. There was little change in local institutions. In spite of its centralized monarchy, France itself abounded in local customs, privileges, and jurisdictions, and it was natural and prudent to allow even greater toleration in a newly conquered territory. Subject to the Sovereign Council and the intendant, local affairs went on very much in their old way and in large measure in the German tongue. Much was accomplished for the material wellbeing of the country, and the inhabitants came to recognize certain advantages in French rule. The old regime was a period of gradual assimilation without violence.

The institutions which the old regime tolerated in Alsace, the Revolution swept away. German historians naturally emphasize the excesses and violence of the Revolution, French historians its social and political reforms; but there is general agreement that it took long and rapid strides in the direction of making the country French. “It made an end of all the German mediaeval institutions which remained,” is the sad summary of Meyer’s _Handlexikon_.[18] The Revolution destroyed privilege, abolished seigniorial rights and jurisdictions, and established a democratic social order as fully in Alsace and Lorraine as in the rest of France. There was of course opposition, and the anti-religious policy of the Revolution was steadily resisted by this strongly Catholic population, but in general Alsace and Lorraine moved with the new movement. The Marseillaise was first sung at Strasburg; Alsatians served in great numbers in the armies which carried the principles of 1789 across Europe; and names like Kléber and Ney illustrate the share of these provinces in the wars of the Napoleonic era. The acceptance of the Revolution in Alsace and Lorraine made them at last one with France. “It is the Revolution, not Louis XIV, which made Alsace French,” wrote Fustel de Coulanges in 1870. “Since that moment Alsace has followed all our destinies, it has lived our life. It has shared all our thoughts and feelings, our victories and defeats, our glory and our defects, all our joys and all our sorrows.”[19] By 1813, confess the German historians of Alsace, “all feeling for Germany had been lost,” and “no trace remained of the ancient community of race between the Alsatians and their German brothers.”[20]

This participation in the life and ideals of France continued until 1871. There was, it is true, a considerable feeling of particularism in Alsace, and to a lesser extent in Lorraine, as well as some natural sympathy between the Protestant minority in Alsace and the Protestants beyond the Rhine; but there was no movement for separation from France and no desire manifested therefor. Toward 1870 the desire for the recovery of these ‘lost provinces’ became more pronounced in Germany, and it was fanned into flame as the war of 1870 progressed; but this nationalistic movement found little or no response among the Alsatians whom it claimed as long-lost kinsmen. If they were still German “socially and ethically,” “politically and nationally they were thoroughly French.” They were Germans as members of the family, Frenchmen as members of the nation.[21] The Germans freely admitted in 1871 that the Alsatians did not yet desire reunion with Germany, but this was laid to their French education, and time and experience of the blessings of German rule were expected to work a rapid change in their desires. The state of opinion in Alsace at the time of the Franco-Prussian war is excellently shown by an outside observer, Sir Robert Morier, then British secretary of legation at Darmstadt, whence he had opportunity to follow closely the events of the war and the course of German opinion. Strongly pro-German and anti-French throughout, he made it his business to inquire from the best German sources whether there was any party in Alsace which desired annexation to Germany, and the answer was uniformly in the negative. Among others he interrogated the Grand Duke of Baden, who had led an army in Alsace, and “had given himself the greatest trouble to ascertain the feeling of the population in regard to Germany and ... had come to the conclusion that not only no annexationist party existed, but that the strongest possible national French feeling pervaded the whole population.”[22]

The usual German justification of the seizure of Alsace and Lorraine may be summed up in the words of the historian Ranke in 1870, “We are fighting Louis XIV.” These provinces had been taken from Germany in the seventeenth century; they must now be taken back by their rightful owner. To many people this is still the essence of the problem of Alsace-Lorraine. Now if the world had not moved in the interval between Louis XIV and 1871, there would be little to say in answer to this argument. In the seventeenth century lands and peoples were passed from one sovereign to another like pieces on a chessboard, and what had been lost in one game might well be retaken in the next. But as regards this question the world had changed in three important respects:--

1. Germany had changed. The Germany which lost these provinces to Louis XIV was, as we have seen, a jumble of small states, loosely united under the ineffective headship of the Hapsburgs. The Germany which reclaimed them was a Hohenzollern empire from which much of the old empire, including the Hapsburgs, had been separated or excluded.

2. Alsace and Lorraine had changed. They had lost their German institutions and political sympathies and had become in all political respects French as the result of two centuries of membership in the French state, and especially of their share in the French Revolution.

3. European public opinion had changed through the growth of nationality, and was coming to regard peoples as entitled to determine their own destiny, or at least to be consulted regarding it. To tear away people from the country of which they formed a part in order to unite them with a state to which they had belonged two centuries before was becoming an anachronism.

It is quite true, then, that Germany in 1871 was fighting Louis XIV, but in the spirit of Louis XIV rather than that of the later nineteenth century. Its appeal to history was in reality a denial of the facts of historic change, in that it asserted the predominance of the older historic tradition against the newer and more vital historic tradition created during the union of Alsace and Lorraine with France. Only a clear pronouncement of the inhabitants themselves in favor of such a transfer could justify it to the thinking of a later age. Yet a popular vote was neither permitted nor desired by Germany in 1871 or at any time between 1871 and 1918.

In all such discussions of the affinities of Alsace and Lorraine, the outsider is struck with the failure of French and German to meet each other’s arguments. The truth seems to be that the disputants move in different realms of thought and feeling. To the Germans the German character of Alsace is accepted as self-evident, so that any connection with France appears unnatural and contrary to all national life. To the French the community of political and social ideas gained by long union with France seems the determining element, and subjection to Germany seems something monstrous.

In spite of all that has been written about the supposed affinities and desires of the population of Alsace-Lorraine, it must not be forgotten that the national interests of Germany and France are vitally concerned in its possession, not merely in the general sense of the desire to keep or to recover something which has been fought over as a matter of national honor, but in the very definite respects of military advantage and economic power. And there have been times when these considerations were put nakedly in the foreground as the dominant motives. Thus Emperor William I wrote to Empress Eugénie October 26, 1870: “The required cessions of territory have no other purpose than to set back the point of departure of the French armies which will come to attack us in the future.”[23] German blood, said Bismarck, “was shed not for the sake of Alsace-Lorraine, but for the German empire, its unity, and the protection of its frontiers.”[24] Stern treatment of its people he defended on the ground that it was the glacis of a fortress, to be used for the benefit of the Fatherland behind it, irrespective of the desires of the conquered.[25]

The military purpose of the annexation was also evident from the boundaries of the ceded territory. The frontier of the Vosges, of obvious advantage to Germany from a strategic point of view, might also be argued for on other grounds as the natural line of demarcation between Alsace and France--the watershed between two river systems, in part the boundary between French and German speech, etc. No such ‘natural’ or linguistic argument, however, could be urged for the annexation of French Lorraine. Here the obvious and declared object was the fortress of Metz, dominating the approaches to the upper Rhine by way of the Saar and to the middle Rhine by way of the valley of the Moselle. Bismarck, it is generally understood, wished to take only Alsace and feared the danger of a French population in the west, but Moltke and the military party insisted on Metz and had their way.

Still another consideration had weight in drawing the frontiers of 1871, namely the iron deposits of Lorraine. Apart from the potash of Upper Alsace, it so happens that the great natural resources of Alsace-Lorraine lay on its outer edges, in the coal of the Saar valley and the iron of the Lorraine border. The problems of the Saar will be discussed in the next chapter in relation to the frontier of 1814; those of the Lorraine frontier are particularly instructive in connection with our present subject.

The iron which forms the greatest mineral resource of Alsace-Lorraine is a part of the _minette_ district, about forty miles in length and fourteen miles in breadth, lying on the borders of France and Luxemburg. The Franco-German frontier of 1871 divided this area nearly equally between the two countries, save for a small strip on the north extending beyond the Luxemburg line. Most of this ore is strongly phosphoric (_minette_), and could not be worked advantageously until the invention in 1878 of the Thomas process for dephosphorization. The ores are not relatively rich, the average iron content being 33 to 35 per cent; but they are easily mined and are sufficiently porous to be easily crushed, while a limestone which fluxes easily occurs either with the ore, as at Briey, or in the immediate neighborhood.

In 1913 German Lorraine produced 20,600,000 long tons, or three-fourths of the iron mined in Germany. French Lorraine in the same year produced 19,400,000 tons, or 90 per cent of the product of France, of which a considerable portion was exported to Germany. Of the world’s total production of iron in 1913, 29 per cent came from the _minette_ district, i. e., 12 per cent from German Lorraine, 12 per cent from French Lorraine and 5 per cent from Luxemburg. The rest of Europe furnished 24 per cent. The reserves have been estimated as 3000 million tons for French Lorraine and 1830 million tons for German Lorraine; more recent estimates make the two more nearly equal, but with the preponderance in favor of the French. The whole constitutes by far the richest iron supply in Europe and one of the three or four greatest in the world.

This enormous development of the _minette_ district was quite unforeseen in 1871, yet we know that even then the Germans were not blind to the importance of its iron. The iron deposits of the region were carefully studied by German geologists for their government, with the result that the German territorial demands were shaped with the purpose of including the best of them and were further increased between the preliminaries of Versailles and the final treaty of Frankfort. Hence the meanderings of the frontier then drawn. It was believed that the main vein had been secured, comprising the ores near the surface which alone appeared workable with profit, and that nothing valuable in the deposit had been omitted. Only later was it discovered that the dip of the strata toward Briey and Longwy concealed an even richer field on the French side which could be worked to a considerable depth. Moreover the German geologists of 1871 were especially interested in the phosphorus-free ore and could not foresee the value which the Thomas process would give the _minette_. Lamentations over their shortsightedness were heard before the war,[26] and in August 1914 German engineers hastened to occupy Briey and Longwy, whose ores are valued not only for their content but for mixing with the less calcareous German ores. It was frequently declared in Germany that without this occupied territory the production of German munitions would have to cease, although this is hardly justified by the facts now available concerning the actual use which was made of _minette_ ore for this purpose.

Moreover, it is well to remember that readjustments of the Lorraine frontier at the expense of France were a constant objective of the Germans throughout the war. At times these were sketched broadly as part of a general advance of the German boundary along the whole front from Belfort to the mouth of the Somme, but more frequently they are described as “improvements” of the frontier in Lorraine, with the _minette_ area of French Lorraine and the great border fortresses as the definite objectives. The acquisition of Briey and Longwy figured in all the principal programs of annexation, especially those of the great economic interests, which went so far as to declare that a war which did not secure them for Germany would be a failure. The object was clearly economic, or rather, in view of the place of iron and steel in modern warfare, military-economic.

More specifically military was the demand for the great fortresses of this part of the French frontier: Belfort, commanding the ‘Burgundian’ gate leading from Upper Alsace to the valleys of the Doubs and Saône, and still left in French hands after its heroic resistance of 1871; Epinal, on the Moselle; Toul, commanding the passage from the Moselle to the Meuse; and Verdun on the Meuse, whose importance was made clear to the world in the great operations of 1916-17. The strength of these positions is evident from the fact that the French hold on them remained unshaken during more than four years of war. Their importance is further indicated by the German demand, made at the outbreak of hostilities, that Toul and Verdun be handed over as guarantees of French neutrality. Such conditions of peace kept reappearing, sometimes under the specious suggestion of a “slight rectification of frontier” without indicating the decisive value of a few miles of territory in this region.

The day of such Pan-German dreams is over. They are mentioned merely to indicate the nature of the German war aims, and the fact that German interest in Alsace-Lorraine was not dictated wholly by motives of the language, race, or historic affinities of the population.

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During the war the German attitude on Alsace-Lorraine was to stand pat, while at the same time taking stronger measures for destroying the local opposition. The Germans refused, as before, to admit that there was anything to discuss, much less anything to yield. Autonomy[27], even, was not officially proposed until the last month of the war, in a last effort to save Germany’s pride and iron mines. The German peace terms sent to President Wilson in December 1916 are said to have conceded to France only the small portion of Upper Alsace which had been held by French troops throughout the war. The support of “the just claims of France respecting Alsace-Lorraine”[28] which formed part of the terms proposed by the Austrian emperor in 1917 was promptly disavowed by Germany. Only rare Minority Socialists dared support the idea of a plebiscite.

All this changed with the armistice and the requirement of evacuation of the Reichsland by German troops and officials. The whole of Germany became suddenly enamored of the virtues of a plebiscite. President Wilson’s programme was invoked, on the alleged ground that the wrong done to France in 1871 lay simply in not calling for a popular vote, and the German government declared itself ready to right the wrong now by means of such a vote. The alternatives proposed for the voting were union with Germany, union with France, and an independent state free to form a customs union with either country. If Germany could not keep the Reichsland itself, she might perhaps thus keep its iron and its trade! To such proposals the French turned a deaf ear. Those who had opposed a plebiscite before the victory were not likely to support it now, and doubt disappeared before the reception which Strasburg gave the French troops and the President and Premier. “This is the best of plebiscites,” said President Poincaré in the midst of his tumultuous welcome by the Alsatians, and there were few to deny it. The Germans were genuinely surprised at the warmth of the popular enthusiasm, and began to ask themselves why after fifty years they had failed to get the sympathy of the people.

During the war the idea of a plebiscite in Alsace-Lorraine had been popular with certain sections of Allied and neutral opinion, both as a form of self-determination and as a means of settling finally and conclusively this ancient dispute. Such a decision would be democratic, and it would be final. Against it had been urged the grave practical difficulties which stood in the way of any free expression of the real opinion of the real inhabitants, particularly in view of the emigration of about half a million since 1871, the coming in of some hundreds of thousands from Germany, and the wholesale condemnations and deportations during the war. A popular vote under these conditions would have opened a wide field to bribery, intimidation, and influence of every sort, and would have engendered great bitterness and recrimination. A serious objection of principle was also raised on the part of the French, who felt they would thus be recognizing Germany’s legal right in the Reichsland. The will of the people, they said, had been expressed by the unanimous declarations of their elected representatives in the French Parliament in 1871 and in the German Reichstag in 1874, yet it had been openly flouted by Germany so long as she had any chance of retaining the Reichsland by other means. Germany could not be permitted to ignore a principle at one moment and to invoke it at another when it might possibly be manipulated in her favor, a system of “heads I win, tails you lose.” Such a proceeding was plainly unfair to France, and it also set a bad example of international morality by leaving Germany a chance to profit by her violation of international right in 1871. Under the guise of popular rights this would really sanction an international wrong. Some even maintained that, the treaty of Frankfort having been torn up by Germany in 1914, Alsace and Lorraine therewith reverted to France, _ipso facto_ disannexed. To accept a plebiscite as the basis of restoration was to admit the lawfulness of the act of violence by which they had been seized.

These arguments were hard to answer save on the ground of a strongly expressed demand on the part of the people of Alsace-Lorraine, and, whatever their opinion, no such general demand was forthcoming. Certainly Germany’s record of oppression and failure as a ruler was sufficient to forfeit whatever claims she might justly have had upon the Reichsland, and she had formally accepted President Wilson’s demand that “the wrong done to France in 1871 should be righted.” That wrong consisted, not in failing to hold a plebiscite, but in contemptuously disregarding the unmistakable expressions of popular opinion then and thereafter expressed.

French Socialist opinion still wanted a plebiscite, but the purpose was plainly to satisfy a theoretical scruple, which required a popular vote for any change of sovereignty. For good or ill, Alsace-Lorraine came back to France without a popular consultation; it was administered by France in the interval between the armistice and the treaty of peace; and the treaty recognized French sovereignty as beginning with the armistice, November 11, 1918. The deed of Frankfort was thus undone. A plebiscite seemed impracticable, unless as a mere matter of form, and in that case it was unnecessary. There was something to be said for summoning a popular assembly for other purposes which might easily have expressed the opinion of the people, but this again would have been chiefly a matter of form, to forestall future objections.

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So the fundamental provisions of the treaty which concern Alsace-Lorraine consist merely of a preamble by which the high contracting parties, Germany thus included, recognize “the moral obligation to redress the wrong done by Germany in 1871 both to the rights of France and to the wishes of the population of Alsace and Lorraine,” and the article[29] restoring to France the territories ceded by the treaty of Frankfort. The other articles[30] are, essentially, consequences and applications of this act of restoration. Some of them merely reproduce, in the opposite sense, clauses of the treaty of 1871. In general, however, the Paris articles are fuller and more complicated, partly because they had to be adapted, either by reference or by way of exception, to the other provisions of the instrument in which they are contained, partly because the restoration of territory after half a century necessarily raises questions not involved in the original cession.

Such a question was that of citizenship, which is regulated by an elaborate annex, adjusted to the complex conditions of citizenship and nationality which had arisen in the Reichsland. The general principle adopted is, broadly speaking, that French nationality is acquired _ipso facto_ by those who had lost it in 1871 and by their descendants, except the offspring of a native mother and a German father who had come to the Reichsland subsequently to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war; that it may be claimed before the French authorities by all others save Germans and the descendants of Germans who have come in since 1870; and that such German immigrants and their descendants can acquire French citizenship only by the process of naturalization. The purpose of the whole was to admit on the basis of domicile before 1870, and to exclude, for the present, the Germans, with their descendants, who had come to the Reichsland in large numbers since the German conquest.