Part 8

The economic provisions had to consider not only the status of such individual matters as debts and contracts, pensions and suits at law, but also the new relations created in the region as a whole. Thus France acquired the public property, including the railroads, without any payment, and no share of the German public debt or war indemnity was attached to the transferred territory--arrangements which offset in some measure the principal and interest of the five milliards of war indemnity imposed by Germany in 1871. German economic penetration is restricted not only by the liquidation of existing enterprises but by the right to prohibit new participation in public utilities, mines, quarries, and metallurgical establishments. Important temporary provisions guard against the effects of a sudden interruption of relations between the Left and Right Banks in such matters as ports, terminals, and water power, and in respect to customs tariffs, a period of five years being set during which free exportation is permitted into Germany and free importation of textile materials from Germany into Alsace and Lorraine. This last is particularly important, for the Reichsland enjoyed profitable markets in Germany, and its economic prosperity was constantly urged as an argument for remaining under German rule. Whether or not France can furnish equally good outlets for local manufactures, she must at least provide a reasonable period for readjustment of the lines of trade.

The largest economic question involved in the return of the lost provinces to France is not mentioned in the treaty, namely the enormous transfer of mineral resources. By securing the potash of Upper Alsace France halves the German supply and thus breaks the German monopoly of the world’s mineral potash; by joining the iron of Lorraine to the iron of Briey, Longwy, and Nancy, France obtains, save for the small share of Luxemburg, full control of the greatest iron field in Europe. The _minette_ ore is no longer shared between France and Germany, it is monopolized by France. If France had Germany’s coal, she might try to establish an economic supremacy as great as that possessed by Germany at the outbreak of the war. Late in 1918 one began to hear suggestions for some sort of _condominium_ in Lorraine, or for a guarantee of German participation in its mine and furnaces; but such proposals found no favor with the French government. No such arrangements had been made for the benefit of France in 1871, and she saw no reason for making them now. And if other great powers had pointed out the danger of so great a monopoly in the world, the French might have replied that they had little coal, less oil, and no copper. After all, the nub of the situation is that France needs coal and Germany needs iron, and sooner or later it will be necessary to exchange one for the other. The sooner this natural necessity is recognized in a _modus vivendi_, the better for all concerned. If the compelling forces of trade are not allowed to assert themselves with reasonable freedom, the matter may well cause grave international difficulty.

Nor did the conference concern itself with other internal matters which had been much discussed before the armistice. During the forty-seven years of separation, France and the Reichsland had necessarily diverged in many matters of institutions, legislation, and social conditions, so that several difficult problems of readjustment were presented. The law of the new German civil code of 1900, the German organization of local government, the German systems of taxation and social legislation were well established in Alsace-Lorraine, and could not immediately be rooted up, if indeed their abolition was always desirable. Perhaps the most striking point of divergence was to be found in the relations of church and state. The Reichsland had preserved the system of the Concordat of 1801 and analogous measures for the Protestant and Jewish religious bodies, so that the government maintained religion from public funds and exercised direct authority over the appointment of the clergy. In France the Separation Laws of 1905 and 1907 had carried through the complete separation of church and state, so that the state relinquished the nomination of the higher clergy and discontinued the payment of clerical salaries, at the same time taking over ecclesiastical property. France had also suppressed the teaching religious orders and put all education into lay hands in so-called ‘neutral schools.’ These measures were viewed with grave disapproval in Alsace-Lorraine, a deeply religious country where the great majority of the schools are under the control of religious bodies and much of the lower education is still in the hands of nuns. Serious difficulty would be encountered in extending the French system to Alsace-Lorraine, and in this, as in other fields, some measure of local independence is required, at least for the present.

In adjusting their relations with the restored provinces the French will need an uncommon measure of tact, sympathetic understanding, and breadth of view, and any mistakes will be viewed critically in the country itself and magnified beyond the Rhine. Nevertheless, the questions are not now international, and it is earnestly to be hoped that they may not become international. They may best be left in the hands of those directly concerned, the people of France, including henceforth, for this as for all other purposes, the three departments of the Haut-Rhin, the Bas-Rhin, and the Moselle, which were once known as Alsace-Lorraine.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The best history of Alsace is R. Reuss, _Histoire d’Alsace_ (11th edition, Paris, 1916). There is no analogous work for Lorraine; see C. Pfister, _La Lorraine, le Barrois, et les Trois Evêchés_ (Paris, 1912). A good recent book in German is lacking; see Lorenz and Scherer, _Geschichte des Elsass_ (Berlin, 1886). For the seventeenth century, see R. Reuss, _L’Alsace au xviiᵉ siècle_ (Paris, 1897-98). On the cession of 1871, see G. May, _Le traité de Francfort_ (Paris, 1909); and for the fixing of the frontier, A. Laussedat, _La délimitation de la frontière franco-allemande_ (Paris, 1901), with facsimile of the original map showing the changes between the preliminaries of Versailles and the final treaty.

There is a vast literature of the period since 1871 and the ‘question’ in all its aspects. Convenient accounts in English are B. Cerf, _Alsace-Lorraine since 1870_ (New York, 1919); C. D. Hazen, _Alsace-Lorraine under German Rule_ (New York, 1917); C. Phillipson, _Alsace-Lorraine_ (London, 1918); and E. A. Vizetelly, _The True Story of Alsace-Lorraine_ (London, 1918). Examples of the literature are: H. and A. Lichtenberger, _La question d’Alsace-Lorraine_ (Paris, 1915), by two fair-minded Frenchmen of Alsatian origin; the various books of the Alsatian nationalist, Abbé E. Wetterlé; S. Grumbach, _Das Schicksal Elsass-Lothringens_ (Neuchâtel, 1915), by an Alsatian Socialist; D. Schäfer, _Das Reichsland_ (Berlin, 1915), Pan-German; H. Wendel, _Elsass-Lothringen und die Sozial-Demokratie_ (Berlin, 1916), Social Democrat; H. Ruland, _Deutschtum und Franzosentum in Elsass-Lothringen_ (Colmar, 1908); E. Florent-Matter, _Les Alsaciens-Lorrains contre l’Allemagne_ (Paris, 1918). The brilliant statement of the French case in the letter of Fustel de Coulanges to Mommsen (now in his _Questions historiques_, Paris, 1893, pp. 505-512) has lost none of its point with time. A. Schulte, _Frankreich und das linke Rheinufer_ (Stuttgart, 1918), is an historical polemic against French claims.

A good manual of the government under German rule is O. Fischbach, _Das öffentliche Recht des Reichslandes_ (Tübingen, 1914).

The human geography of the whole region is admirably discussed in P. Vidal de la Blache, _La France de l’Est_ (Paris, 1917). There is a good general article by L. Gallois in the _Geographical Review_, vi, pp. 89-115 (1918). There are excellent discussions of resources, as well as of frontiers, by eminent geographers and historians in the first volume of the _Travaux du Comité d’Etudes: L’Alsace-Lorraine et la frontière du Nord-est_ (Paris, 1918).

On the iron of Lorraine see _The Iron Resources of the World_ (Stockholm, 1910); the _Atlas of Mineral Resources_ of the U. S. Geological Survey; E. Gréaux, _Le fer en Lorraine_ (Paris, 1908); F. Engerand, _L’Allemagne et le fer_ (Paris, 1916); H. Schumacher, _Die westdeutsche Eisenindustrie_ (Leipzig, 1910); P. Krusch, in Petermann’s _Mitteilungen_, lxiii, pp. 41-44 (1917).

* * * * *

The formation of Alsace and Lorraine is traced, from the point of view that they are naturally German, in Boeckh and Kiepert, _Historische Karte von Elsass und Lothringen_ (Berlin, 1870); and in Droysen, _Historischer Handatlas_ (1886), no. 41. For the changes of 1789-1815, the _Atlas_ of the Comité d’Etudes is convenient, as also for mineral resources. There is a good map of the _minette_ field in Petermann’s _Mitteilungen_, 1917, plate 8. The linguistic maps of C. This will be found in _Beiträge zur Landes- und Volkskunde von Elsass-Lothringen_, parts 1 and 5 (1887, 1888); those of H. Witte, showing the modifications of the linguistic frontier, in _Forschungen zur deutschen Landes- und Volkskunde_, viii, x. A percentage map based on the German census of languages is given by Langhans, in _Deutsche Erde_, 1910, plate 1; cf. 1909, plate 3. See also Gallois’ maps in _Annales de géographie_, ix, nos. 4, 5; and Gröber, _Grundriss der romanischen Philologie_ (Strasburg, 1904-1906), i, end.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Laband, _Deutsches Reichsstaatsrecht_ (Tübingen, 1912), p. 190.

[17] R. Reuss, _L’Alsace au xviiᵉ siècle_ (Paris, 1898), i, p. 720; ii, p. 186.

[18] Edition of 1890, i, p. 383, removed from later editions.

[19] _Questions historiques_ (Paris, 1893), p. 509.

[20] Lorenz and Scherer, _Geschichte des Elsass_ (Berlin, 1872), p. 441.

[21] Quoted as the opinion of a liberal German advocate of Mainz, who had “a perfect knowledge of Alsace,” in _Memoirs of Sir Robert Morier_ (London, 1911), ii, p. 184.

[22] _Memoirs of Sir Robert Morier_, ii, pp. 185 ff.

[23] Printed from the original in _Revue historique_, cxxvii, p. ii (1918).

[24] _Die politischen Reden_, vi, p. 201; see also v, p. 56; vi, pp. 31, 32, 167; xiii, p. 347.

[25] _Die politischen Reden_, xiii, pp. 375, 26, 27; vii, p. 414.

[26] “Unfortunately the theory [that only a zone of two kilometres was workable] was held by the German geologists who were consulted in fixing the frontiers of the treaty of Frankfort, and hence led to the present course of the Franco-German frontier.” H. Schumacher, _Die westdeutsche Eisenindustrie_ (Leipzig, 1910), p. 147; and in Grumbach, _Das annexionistische Deutschland_, p. 172.

[27] Annexation to Prussia was even urged, as by Laband, in _Deutsche Revue_, June 1917, much as by Treitschke in 1870 (_Preussische Jahrbücher_, xxvi, pp. 398 ff.).

[28] Facsimile in _L’Illustration_, January 3, 1920.

[29] Article 51.

[30] Articles 52-79 and annex.

IV

THE RHINE AND THE SAAR

If Alsace-Lorraine occupied the attention of the Peace Conference in far less measure than it had occupied the attention of Europe during the preceding half-century, quite the contrary is true of the related questions of the Rhine, the Left Bank, and the Saar valley. By the recovery of Alsace France found herself once more on the Rhine; she demanded a corresponding voice in Rhenish affairs. By regaining her boundaries of 1870, she was in a position to reopen the question of her boundaries of 1814, of those northern appendages of Alsace and Lorraine which she had lost to Prussia in 1815 and which contained the coal so much needed for the restoration of France. By defeating Germany decisively she was able to demand military guarantees on the Left Bank against another German invasion, perhaps even special privileges as well. French imperialism, French reparation, French self-defence were all in some degree involved in these problems of the Rhine and the intervening lands.

Let us look at these matters in their historical setting. To German geographers and historians the Rhine is a German river, by nature and by history, its valley forming a physiographic unity, itself the great highway of Germany. It is true, they sadly admit, that the upper third of the valley has been in course of time almost wholly withdrawn from Germany to fall under Swiss domination, but this still remains, in culture if not in politics, almost purely Germanic, like the lower Rhine in Holland. The common German view was summed up a century ago in the phrase of Arndt, so often repeated in 1870, “Der Rhein Deutschlands Strom, nicht Deutschlands Grenze.”

Since the seventeenth century there have not been lacking in France certain historians and geographers who have maintained that the Rhine was the natural frontier of France, as it had been of Roman Gaul. “Rhenus finis Germaniae,” said the contemporaries of Louis XIV, while a century later Carnot and Danton spoke of the Rhine as the natural limit of France. Scholars of this way of thinking have insisted upon the fundamentally Celtic character of the Left Bank, if not of the Rhine itself--is not _der Rhein, der deutsche Rhein_, originally a Celtic word?--and have emphasized French elements in Rhenish culture and French influence upon its political life. During the war men of this school organized the Comité de la Rive Gauche du Rhin and published a fair amount of propagandist literature which sought to reclaim the Left Bank for France; but while the group included some scholars of eminence, it cannot be considered representative of the great body of French historians.

To one who approaches the matter without any nationalistic prepossessions the fate of the Rhine valley seems to have been determined, not by any geographic necessity, but by the vicissitudes of history. France has no such clearly marked frontier on the northeast as it possesses in other directions, for the Rhine, like other rivers, unites more than it divides, while a mountain range like the Vosges, strongly recommended by German writers in the region of Alsace, fails as we proceed northward. As a matter of history, whatever value the Rhine frontier possessed in Roman days disappeared with the Germanic invasions, and ever since the partitions of the Frankish empire in the ninth century the lands between the Rhine and the Meuse have been debated between France and Germany. There is no racial frontier, for the region is one of mixed Teutonic and Alpine types, whose distribution was more affected by highland and valley than by any considerations of east and west. There is a linguistic frontier, which has scarcely changed in the open country since the early Middle Ages, and French and German speech have naturally been the vehicles of their respective civilizations; but the linguistic and the political frontiers have rarely coincided, and “the linguistic frontier has never determined the political.”[31] The decisive considerations have been political pressure and military force, and in the more recent period political affinities and economic relations.

At first Germany had the advantage, if we mean by Germany that loose congeries of tribal duchies and later of feudal principalities which made up the mediaeval Empire. Thus the partition of Meersen (870), which you will seek in vain in the text of Freeman’s _Geography_ or in Schrader’s _Atlas historique_, is often cited by German scholars as fixing a permanent line of demarcation to Germany’s advantage, and was even invoked by Brockdorff-Rantzau in May 1919 as the original basis of the German title to the Saar valley. Yet this same line would give to France Maestricht, Liège, and the mouths of the Rhine! After the disintegration of the Empire in the later Middle Ages, French advance began actively in the sixteenth century in the region of the Three Bishoprics. In the seventeenth century Louis XIV intrenched himself on the Saar at Saarlouis, and piece by piece gained possession of Alsace. The Revolution carried the tricolor down the Rhine from Landau to the Dutch border. Then came the treaty of Vienna, setting France back to the limits of 1789 and even farther, and the treaty of Frankfort by which France lost all contact with the Rhine. The victory of 1918 again put France on the Rhine. A German medal of 1917 represents an exhausted France driven to her death by England at Verdun, while on the obverse under the insignia of peace the German Rhine flows calmly on--“und ruhig fliesst der Rhein.” The French flag now floats not only over Verdun but over Metz and Strasburg as well. The Rhine still flows on but in its Alsatian portion it is no longer the German Rhine; it is “Deutschlands Grenze, nicht Deutschlands Strom.”

* * * * *

With France once more a Rhine power, the perspective requires certain readjustments. First of all, there is the question of navigation. Freedom of commerce on the Rhine was established in 1815 by the treaty of Vienna, but it has been exercised for the benefit of the states bordering on the river, who drew up in 1868 at Mannheim the convention which has since regulated navigation on the river. France was one of the signatories, but dropped out with the loss of her riparian status in 1871, when a representative was assigned to the Reichsland. Of the others,--Baden, Bavaria, Hesse, Holland, and Prussia--Holland and Prussia were the most important, but the small states were in a position to delay and hinder. The executive organ, the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine, sat semiannually at Mannheim, but had little coercive power over members. Complaint was made of discrimination against the vessels of other states and against certain cities, notably Strasburg. Switzerland, obviously a Rhine power, asked in vain for admission. In spite of the enormous growth of trade on the Rhine, the whole system belonged to an earlier age, and its reform was required in the general interest as well as in the interest of France.

Besides the general provisions of the Paris treaty securing freedom of transit and travel across German territory and prohibiting discrimination against the nationals of the Allied and Associated Powers in German ports and German rivers, a special chapter deals with the Rhine and its tributaries.[32] Pending the making of a general convention relating to international waterways, the convention of Mannheim is modified by granting France representation equal to the total number of delegates of the German riparian states (four), as well as an additional member as President of the Commission, while to the two representatives of the Netherlands are added an equal number from Switzerland and from Belgium, whose interests in the Rhine are thus recognized, and from two outside powers of large commercial interests, Great Britain and Italy. At the same time the jurisdiction of the Commission is extended to cover the upper Rhine between Basel and Lake Constance, if Switzerland consents, the lower Moselle, and tributary canals and artificial channels. The headquarters of the Commission are transferred from Mannheim to Strasburg, which is evidently meant to play a large part in the future development of the river. In order that Strasburg may not suffer while its port and terminal facilities are being developed to correspond to the new needs, the opposite port of Kehl in Baden is combined for seven years into a single port with Strasburg, the whole under the supervision of the Central Rhine Commission.[33]

Another problem of the upper Rhine is that of its water power, a matter which had proved difficult to adjust between Baden and the Reichsland and was likely to make greater trouble between two sovereign and antagonistic states. Alsace had complained that the Grand Duchy opposed plans for the utilization of the Rhine, and France proposed to take no chances of future disagreement. So Germany agrees that, subject to the approval of the Central Commission, France may build dams and take water from the Rhine on the whole course of the river between the extreme points of the French frontier, acquiring for proper compensation the necessary supports and rights of way on the Right Bank, with the understanding that Germany has a right to the value of half the power thus produced. Germany binds herself not to derive canals from the Rhine opposite the French frontiers.[34] Henceforth the Rhine is to be harnessed to serve the needs of Alsace.

* * * * *

If participation in the affairs of the upper Rhine was incidental to the recovery of Alsace, the lower course of the river was quite another matter. Between the Rhine and the Franco-Belgian frontier lay a belt of German territory, varying in breadth from fifty to one hundred miles, with an area of about 10,000 square miles, and a population of five and a half millions. Of these, nearly a million were in the Bavarian Palatinate, 50,000 in the principality of Birkenfeld, about 400,000 in Hesse; the rest, the great majority, were in the Rheinprovinz of Prussia. Practically all of them spoke German. They had been under their existing governments for at least a century; they had been under some sort of German government far longer.

Down to 1789 this region was parcelled out among a great number of petty principalities, lay or ecclesiastical, from the considerable dominions of the archbishoprics of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne, and the bishoprics of Speier and Worms, to the minute lay states of a few villages which can scarcely be distinguished on the map. A careful historian has counted ninety-seven such independent states on the Left Bank in 1789. Swept away by the Revolution, most of them were never restored. The chief exception was the Palatinate, which had passed about from one branch of the reigning family to another, and came back to Bavaria in 1815 as a well rounded territory under the house of Zweibrücken. The Congress of Vienna also handed over the valley of the Nahe to Hesse-Darmstadt, and gave the duke of Oldenburg a compensation of 25,000 souls to be furnished by Prussia, 20,000 of which were found on the Left Bank and formed into the principality of Birkenfeld.

The great gainer by the new arrangements was Prussia. Before the Revolution her only possessions on the Left Bank, namely Cleves, Mörs, and Prussian Guelders, were on the lower Rhine. At Vienna, as a compensation for the Saxony which was refused her, she was given the greater part of the Left Bank, her territory now reaching from the valley of the Saar to the Dutch border. For the first time Prussia and France were neighbors. However German these lands may have been, they had never been Prussian, and the bargain by which they were handed over to Prussia took no account of past history or the desires of the population. If the Paris Conference was to undo the historic wrongs perpetrated at Vienna, it could well begin here.