No More Learning

The fortress of Conde had to be left to the French
for the sake of its name; the conquerors thought
that it would be cruel to take away a stronghold
from France which had been named after a
great Bourbon general. What thanks did we get
for our magnanimity in 1814? The Hundred
Days and Waterloo. What gratitude for our
consideration in 18 15? A steadily growing politi-
cal demoralization, which gradually destroyed
every feeling of justice in France; a conviction
that not only was the Rhine country the property
of France, but that even those art treasures which
the conquerors of the world once took from Berlin
and Venice, from Rome and Danzig, belonged
of right to the capital of the whole world. If
the France of 181 5, which still possessed a great
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? 102 What We Demand from France
treasure of moral forces, fell back so soon on greedy
dreams of conquest, what have we to expect from
the society of the Second Empire, which has lost
all its faith in the ideal treasures of life in the
course of the barren party struggles of these many
years? The nation is our enemy, not this Bona-
parte, who rather obeyed than led it. For a long
time to come, the one idea which will inspire the
fallen State will be revenge for Worth and For-
bach, revenge for Mars and Gravelotte. For
the time, peaceful relations founded on mutual
confidence are impossible.
It is not sufficient for us now that we should
feel ourselves able to resist an attack from France
or even from a European alliance. Our nation in
arms cannot afford to send its sons forth at any
moment into such another steeplechase against its
greedy neighbour. Our military organization has
no meaning without secure boundaries. The dis-
tracted world already foresees a whole brood of
wars springing out of the bloody seed of this.
We owe it some guarantee of permanent peace
among the nations, and we shall only give it, so far
as human strength can, when German guns frown
from the fortified passes of the Vosges on the
territories of the Gaulish race, when our armies
can sweep into the plains of Champagne in a
few days* march, when the teeth of the wild beast
are broken, and weakened France can no longer
venture to attack us. Even Wellington, the good
friend of the Bourbons, had to allow that France
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? What We Demand from France 103
was too strong for the peace of Europe ; and the
statesmen of the present day, whenever they have
reahzed the altered equiUbrium of the Powers,
will feel that the strengthening of the boundaries
of Germany contributes to the security of the peace
of the world. We are a peaceful nation. The
traditions of the Hohenzollems, the constitution
of our army, the long and difficult work before us
in the upbuilding of our united German State,
forbid the abuse of our warlike power. We need a
generation devoted to the works of peace to solve
the difficult but not impossible problem of the
unification of Germany, while France is driven into
all the delusions of a policy of adventure by the
false political ideas which are engrained in her
luxurious people, by the free-lance spirit of her
conscript soldiers, and the all but hopeless break-
up of her domestic life.
In view of our obligation to secure the peace of
the world, who will venture to object that the
people of Alsace and Lorraine do not want to
belong to us? The doctrine of the right of all the
branches of the German race to decide on their
own destinies, the plausible solution of demagogues
without a fatherland, shiver to pieces in presence
of the sacred necessity of these great days. These
territories are ours by the right of the sword,
and we shall dispose of them in virtue of a higher
right -- the right of the German nation which will
not permit its lost children to remain strangers to
the German Empire. We Germans, who know
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? 104 What We Demand from France
Germany and France, know better than these
unfortunates themselves what is good for the
people of Alsace, who have remained under the
misleading influence of their French connection
outside the sympathies of new Germany. Against
their will we shall restore them to their true
selves. We have seen with joyful wonder the
undying power of the moral forces of history,
manifested far too frequently in the immense
changes of these days, to place much confidence in
the value of a mere popular disinclination. The
spirit of a nation lays hold, not only of the genera-
tions which live beside it, but of those which
are before and behind it. We appeal from the
mistaken wishes of the men who are there to-day
to the wishes of those who were there before them.
We appeal to all those strong German men who
once stamped the seal of our German nature on
the language and manners, the art and the social
life of the Upper Rhine. Before the nineteenth
century closes the world will recognize that the
spirits of Erwin von Steinbach and Sebastian
Brandt are still alive, and that we were only obey-
ing the dictates of national honour when we made
little account of the preferences of the people who
live in Alsace to-day.
During the last two centuries, from the earliest
beginnings of the Prussian State, we have been
struggling to liberate the lost German lands from
foreign domination. It is not the object of this
national policy to force every strip of German soil
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? What We Demand from France 105
which we ever gave up in the days of our weakness,
back again into our new Empire. We see without
uneasiness our people in Switzerland developing
themselves in peace and freedom unconnected with
the German State. We do not count on the break-
ing up of Austria. We have no desire to interfere
with the separate life of that branch of the German
stock which has grown up in the Netherlands into a
small independent nation. But we cannot permit
a German people, thoroughly degraded and
debased, to serve against Germany, before our
eyes, as the vassal of a foreign Power. France
owes her predominance in Europe solely to our
having been broken into fragments, and to the
condition of the other German Powers, and her
influence is out of all proportion to the real force
of the GalHc nationality. Who would have ven-
tured in Luther's days to say that France would
ever be superior to the warlike Germany which
he knew? The blood of German nobles flowed in
torrents in the Huguenot wars of the French; a
German host, the host of Bemhard von Weimar,
was the solid centre round which the armies of
Louis XIV grew up ; it was in our own school that
the Gaul first learned to defeat us. Who can count
all the German commanders of the Bourbons, from
Bassenstein (Bassompierre) down to Marechal de
Saxe; all the gallant German regiments, Royal
Alsace, Royal Deux Ponts, Royal Allemand; all
the teeming hosts of warlike dependants whom
the treachery of German princes brought under the
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? io6 What We Demand from France
yoke of the foreigner? When those frightful
robberies began with the Revolution, which at last
made the determination to fight the French like
a passion in the blood of our peaceful people, and
the name of "Frenchman" a synonym in North
Germany for "enemy," there were thousands of
Germans still fighting under that enemy's banner.
Ney and Kellermann, Lefebvre, Rapp, and Kleber
were counted among the bravest of the brave.
Even in this war, the best soldiers in the army of
France are the sturdy German stock of the people
of Alsace and Lorraine, and the genuine Celtic
race of Bretagne.
When Alsace fell under the dominion of the
French, our Empire lay powerless on the ground.
The fire of the German spirit, which had once
flamed through the whole world, seemed extin-
guished. Germany bowed herself before the
conquering policy and the victorious culture of
France. Even so, the French spirit has been
unable quite to displace the German popular spirit,
which is even yet as vigorous as it is on the Upper
Rhine. Since that time the life of our people
has progressed steadily from strength to strength.
We are before the French to-day in the number and
in the density of our population. How often have
their war orators demanded conquests on the
Rhine because France has been unable to keep
peace with the increase in our population, as if
it were the bounden duty of us Germans to make
up for Celtic unchastity and impotence by pouring
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? What We Demand from France 107
into their veins, every now and then, fresh Ger-
man blood? We have broken with the rules of
their Art, and we can confidently challenge com-
parison between the free movement of our scienti-
fic and religious life, and the spiritual culture
of France. We have succeeded in giving our
richer and stronger language such a freedom and
deHcacy that it need no longer fear the rivalry of
French. Even the advantage of their elder cul-
ture, the fine tone and polish of social intercourse,
is passing away, since the wanton audacity of
the demi-monde of Paris has all but blotted out
the division lines between honourable and de-
graded people. We adopted with gratitude the
ideas of their Revolution, so far as they were
healthy, and we have built them up on the solid
basis of a free administration, such as France
never knew. We are trying earnestly to pro-
cure, after our own fashion, that priceless bless-
ing of the unity of the State for which we have
long envied them; and we believe that we shall be
able by hard work to make up for the slight
advantage in their economic life which they
owe to the Empire and to the situation of their
country.
They have felt the weight of our sword, and we
had challenged the whole world to say which of
the two combatants bore himself with the greater
manliness, uprightness, and modesty. At all times,
the subjection of a German race to France has
been an unhealthy thing; to-day it is an offence
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? io8 What We Demand from France
against the reason of History -- a vassalship of free
men to half -educated barbarians.
Sooner or later the hour must have struck which
would have summoned the growing German
State to demand security from France for the
preservation of our nationality in Alsace. It has
come sooner, and it is more full of promise, than
any of us had hoped ; and it is our business now to
draw honourable lines of separation between the
German and the Gaulish races, and to lay the old
quarrel for ever. Fifty years ago, Amdt lamented
that if right was not done in that day, it would be
very difficult in the future to do it at all. If we
neglect our duty this time, the French will act
with all that vigorous and passionate hatred
which characterizes nations in their decay; and
will fling themselves on Alsace in the rage of their
reawakened detestation of Germany, resolute to
crush out every trace of the German nature.
It would be to our disgrace as much as to our
disadvantage, and we should have to draw the
sword again to protect our own flesh and blood
from the most hateful of all tyrannies -- the
suppression of its language.
The wretched outcome of the Second Peace of
Paris was fruitful of consequences in our domestic
situation; it greatly contributed to fix in the true
hearts of our people that embittered discontent
which was so long the key-note of German political
feeling. Our victorious armies must not return
this time with the bitter cry that their priceless
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? What We Demand from France 109
sacrifices have been rewarded with ingratitude.
What we need above all things is the glad enthusi-
asm that rises buoyant on the wave of great
events -- the joyful self-consciousness which cannot
grow freely within the constraining furrows of
petty Statedom. In all the words of patriotism
which rang through South Germany before the
battle of Worth, there never was a doubt expressed
as to our final victory, but many a one spoke of
the fear that we should have to wade through the
waters of misfortune of some new Jena before we
could reach ultimate victory. We must have
done with this weary self -distrust, which has eaten
into the simple greatness of our national character.
But so long as that wound still gapes on the Upper
Rhine, the German will never cease the sorrowful
lamentation which Schlegel uttered in the days of
our shame :
Upon the Rhine, my own countrie,
Ah, well-a-day, what woe is me!
For that so much is lost to us !
The masses of South Germany know little of
those splendid successes which the sword of Prussia
long since obtained for us. The liberation of
Pomerania, Silesia, Old Prussia, and Schleswig-
Holstein, lay far outside of the circle of their
vision. Yet the old song.
O Strassburg, O Strassburg,
Thou city wondrous fair !
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? no What We Demand from France
is sung by every peasant of the South ; and from the
day when the German flag waves from the Minster
-- and a splendid and enduring reward of victory
crowns the deeds of the German army^ -- ^in the
distant huts of the Black Forest, and the Suabian
Jura, there will be a joyful confidence that the old
German splendours have risen from the dead, and
that a new augmenter has been given to the Empire.
When our imited strength has won that outwork
of the German State, which is now in such mortal
peril, the nation will have pledged its soul to the
idea of imity. The resistance of the new province
will strengthen the impulse of our policy towards
unity, and constrain all sensible men to range
themselves in disciplined loyalty behind the
Prussian throne. The advantage is all the
greater, as it is still possible that some new Re-
publican attempt in Paris might tempt the moon-
struck glance of the German Radicals once more
to turn gradually towards the west. But the
circle of vision of German politics becomes yearly
wider and freer. When the nation feels that the
vital interests of the German States are involved
in the Slavic, the Scandinavian, and the Latin
world, and that we are standing in the midst of
the greatest and most complex revolution of the
century, our parties will learn to rise out of the
dogmatism of party life, and above the poverty of
doctrinaire programmes, to the earnest and lofty
treatment of the great questions which concern the
State.
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? What We Demand from France iii
The German Confederation which has crossed
the line of the Main will best fulfil its national
mission when the clear activity of the North, and
the more delicate and contemplative nature of the
South, stand side by side in beautiful rivalry.
We cannot spare one of all the powerful races
which make up the complete German nation.
But the narrow footstool of the Confederation in
the south-east reaches no farther than the Bohe-
mian forest. The manifold wealth of our German
civilization will be vastly augmented when the
South German nation is more fully represented in
our new State, and the powerful nationality of the
Germans of the Upper Rhine will certainly show
its genuine German colour very soon after the
foreign whitewash has been washed away.
A politico-economical consideration may be
added. Inspiring descriptions of the rich and
happy plains of Germany make a necessary chapter
of our patriotic catechism, and are never omitted
in our German school books. They affect us as a
sign of true love to the land of our forefathers ; but
they are anything but true in themselves. Our
sober judgment cannot refuse to admit that nature
has dealt with our country much more like a step-
mother than a mother. The singularly barren
outline of our shore coast-hne on the North Sea,
and the course of most of our German rivers and
hill-chains, are just as unfavourable to political
unity as they are to commerce. Only a few
strips of our German soil can compare in natural
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? 112 What We Demand from France
fertility with wealthy Normandy, the luxurious
plains of England, and the teeming corn-fields of
the interior of Russia. But here, in Alsace, there
is a real German district, the soil of which, under
favouring skies, is rich with blessings such as only
a very few spots in the Upper Rhenish Palatinate
and the mountain country of Baden enjoy. The
unusual configuration of the country has made it
possible to pierce canals through gaps in the
mountains -- magnificent waterways, from the
Rhine to the basin of the Rhone and of the Seine --
such as German ground scarcely ever admits.
We are by no means rich enough to be able to re-
nounce so precious a possession.
Everything, in fact, is as clear as day. None of
the foreign statesmen who interfered with our
plans at the time of the Second Peace of Paris
ever attempted to meet the arguments of Hum-
boldt. Jealousy of the growing greatness of
Germany, and the opposition which dominated all
that period between the policies of England and
of Russia -- which vied with each other in showing
favour to France -- were decisive. England had
already secured her war prizes in her colonies, and
Russia hers in her Polish territories ; Germany was
left alone to make her further demands.
The full cynicism of this jealous statesmanship
is revealed in the words which the Czar Alexander
permitted himself in a thoughtless moment,
"Either I must have a hand in this pie, or the pie
shall not be baked at all. " Freiherr von Stein
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? What We Demand from France 113
said, sorrowfully, "Russia decides that we are to
remain vulnerable! " What a difference there is
between then and now! We are not now so
exhausted in money and in men as not to be able
to defy the opposition of the whole of Europe.
The neutral Powers might have stopped this
French attempt at robbery by one strong and
timely word. They failed to utter it, and they
cannot complain to-day because we alone decide
what we shall take as the prize of the victory
which we alone have won. We owe it to the clear-
sighted audacity of Count Bismarck that this war
was begun at the right time -- that the Court of
the Tuileries was not allowed the welcome respite
which would have permitted it to complete the
web of its treacherous devices. And as the war
began as a work of clear and statesmanlike calcu-
lation, so it will end. If, during its prosecution,
we have been magnanimous, almost to a fault -- if
we turned aside from the revolting ill-usage of
our countrymen in France, and disdained to re-
quite with a like brutality the loathsome threats
directed against the women of Baden, we are all
the more bound, at all hazards, to be firm about
the terms of peace, and to complete the work of
1 8 13 and of 1815. What lay in all our hearts as a
far-off vision of longing desire has suddenly sprung
up a practical fact, to be dealt with by a nation un-
prepared for it.
Occasion urges us ; the wonderful
favour of Destiny bends down to offer us, in
the grey dawn of German unity, the wreath
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? 114 What We Demand from France
which we hardly hoped to have won in the mid-day
splendour of the German Empire. Let us grasp
it with courageous hands, that the blood of the
dear ones who have died for us may not again cry
out against our faint-heartedness.
II
ALSACE AND LORRAINE PAST AND PRESENT
Where lies the frontier which we are justified in
demanding? The answer is simple; for since the
French nation made itself prominent in the Celto-
Romance world, its national life and ours have at
all times stood toughly and sharply opposed to one
another. The two peoples dwelt side by side, not
cast together like the nations which a geographical
necessity forces to mingle at various points in
Eastern Europe. Our West and South have,
for a long period, received more culture than they
gave, and yet the French boundary of language has
been able, in the course of centuries, to advance
no farther than a few hours' march. It became a
source of trouble to both peoples when an arbitrary
system of creating new states wedged the Lor-
raine-Burgundian Empire in between their natural
frontiers, to become an apple of unceasing contests ;
while both made a termination of the struggle
difficult to themselves by an aberration of the
national imagination. To this day the French-
man continues to glance across the Rhine with
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? What We Demand from France 115
feelings like those of the ancient Romans under
C^sar. He has never forgotten the days when
gorgeous Treves was the capital of Gaul; his
school-books describe those first centuries of the
Middle Ages, in which no French nation yet ex-
isted, as a period of French dominion. The German
Karl is the Frenchman's Charlemagne; in numer-
ous inscriptions in Alsatian towns the memory of
the Merovingian Dagoberts is purposely freshened
up in order to recall the ancient power of France.
Already in the fifteenth century, when the Armag-
nacs were bringing fire and sword into Upper
Germany, the longing for the Rhine frontier
found expression in France. Above all, since the
days of Louis XIV and Napoleon I, State and
Society, Press and School, have run a race of
rivalry in perverting history; and the whole of
France laments the enormous breach between
Lauterburg and Dunkirk, which the grasping greed
of Germany is declared to have made in the natural
boundaries of France. We Germans, on the other
hand, are unwilling to forget the supreme rights
which the Holy Roman Empire once possessed
over the Burgundian kingdom of the Arelat.
We must hasten to relinquish cheerfully this
dreaming of antiquated dreams. As it is our
intention to force the French to renounce their
vision of the Rhine frontier, to give up to us
what is ours, to recognize the European necessity
of the two intermediate States on the Lower
Rhine and on the Scheldt, we must concede to
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? ii6 What We Demand from France
them what is their due, and frankly confess that
the conquering poHcy of France, directed against
the Burgundian territories, obeyed, in its begin-
nings, a well-justified national instinct. After-
wards, indeed, deluded by easy successes, it passed
all bounds. More than 50,000 square miles of
the Holy Empire belong at this day to the French
State, and by far the greater part of them most
justly. The Southern Provinces of the Burgund-
ian kingdom were French, beyond a doubt. When
Charles V endeavoured at the Peace of Madrid
to sever them from France, the Estates of Bur-
gundy unanimously vowed that they were French-
men, and Frenchmen they would remain; and the
history of three centuries has justified their de-
claration. The fact that the ancient one-headed
eagle of our Empire once stood gorgeous on the
town-hall of Lyons, over the same gate where we
see the equestrian statue of Henry IV to-day; the
fact that the same eagle once gazed down upon
the glorious amphitheatre of Aries; and all similar
facts, are but historical reminiscences which
concern us little, and which are of no more value
for the present policy of Germany than the ancient
feudal rights of our Emperors in Italy.
We desire to renew the power and glory of the
Hohenstaufens and the Ottos, but not their World-
Empire. Our new State owes its strength to the
national idea. Its intention is to be an honest
neighbour to every foreign nationality, a grasping
adversary to none ; and for this reason it finds its
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? What We Demand from France 117
western frontier indicated to it by the language
and manners and life of the rural population.
Every State is kept fresh and young from below.
New forces never cease to arise out of the healthy
depths of the peasant class, while the population
of the towns swiftly changes, and the families of
the upper classes either fall away or are carried off
into other habitations. We Germans still con-
tinue to make this experience in the colonies of our
eastern frontier. Wherever we have succeeded in
Germanizing the peasant, our national life stands
erect; wherever he has remained non-German,
German ways of life wage to this day a struggle for
their existence. Applying this standard, we shall
find German and French nationality separated by
a line which may be roughly described as leading
along the ridge of the Vosges to the sources of
the Saar, and thence to the north-west towards
Diedenhofen and Longwy. What lies beyond is
Gaulish. This boundary-line, hard to be per-
ceived in the hilly districts of Lorraine, is drawn
with mathematical precision at several points of
the Wasgau hills. Wandering westward from the
busy little town of Wesserling in Upper Alsace, one
first ascends through leafy woods, enjoying the
view into the smiling valley of the Thur, and
reaching at Urbes the river boundary, the frontier
of the departement of the Upper Rhine. There the
road leads through a long tunnel, and the moment
the traveller passes out of the dark into the
departement of the Vosges, he sees that the country
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? ii8 What We Demand from France
and its inhabitants have undergone a complete
change. The woods of Germany have vanished,
and naked hills surround the valley of the infant
Moselle. True, it is possible to guess, from the
aspect of the tall peasants, from whom the French
army draws so many fine-looking Cuirassiers,
that many a drop of Germanic blood may flow
in the veins of the population ; but down at Bous-
sang no word of German is spoken. The poorer
fashion in which the houses are built, the wooden
shoes, and the cotton night-cap, at once betray
French civilization. It is nothing short of German
Chauvinism which makes a few newspapers already
gratify themselves by restoring to Remiremont,
which is entirely French, the name of Reimers-
berg. What is it to us that the geographers
of the sixteenth century called Plombieres the
Plumbersbad? that lovely Pont-a-Mousson once
formed an imperial county named Muselbruck?
that no further back than eighty years ago the
Duchy of Lorraine was mentioned under the name
of Nomeny in the Diet at Ratisbon ?
So, too, it is possible, even in Nanzig (Nancy)
to discover faint traces of German reminiscences.
At the railway-station the German traveller is
cheered to observe the comfortable inscription
*'Trinkstube" by the side of the inevitable "Bu-
vette. *' But the capital of Lorraine is French in
manners and in language. This second and more
charming Versailles received its architectural
character from the French regime of its Stanislas le
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? What We Demand from France 119
Bienfaisant, and four years ago it was both sincere
and justified in celebrating the centenary jubilee
of its incorporation in France.
Hardly the tithe of those French provinces
which once upon a time belonged to the Ger-
manic Empire -- a territory comprising about 5000
square miles, with rather less than a million and a
half of inhabitants -- can at this day be reckoned
as German land. It is not the business of a wise
national policy to go very far beyond this extent
of territory; but, at the same time, such a policy
ought not to cling with doctrinaire obstinacy to the
boundary of language as a limit which must in no
case be crossed. There is no perfect identity
between the political and the national frontier in
any European country. Not one of the great
Powers, and Germany no more than the rest
of them, can ever subscribe to the principle that
"language alone decides the formation of States. '*
It would be impossible to carry that principle into
effect. From a military point of view, the German
territory in France is secured by two strongholds,
which lie a few miles beyond the line of language.
The fortress of Belfort commands the gap in the
mountains between the Jura and the Vosges, which
has so often been the gateway through which
invading hosts have passed into or out of France.
The upper part of the course of the Moselle, again,
is covered by Metz, which is at this day, like
Belfort, almost entirely French, in spite of its
ancient traditions as an Imperial city {Reichstadt) ,
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? I20 What We Demand from France
in spite of the German inscriptions which still
appear here and there, on a wagoner's hostelry in
the high-roofed '' German street" {Deutsche Gasse),
in spite of the bad French dialect spoken by its
citizens, in spite of the two thousand German
inhabitants, to whom sermons used to be preached
in German only a few years ago. Are we to
renounce these two strongholds for the sake of an
untenable dogma? Renounce the strong walls of
Metz, which are trebly necessary to us since, in our
good-natured desire for peace, we relinquished the
rock nest of Luxemburg? No! right and prudence
support our moderate claims when we simply de-
mand the German territory in the possession of
France, and so much Gaulish territory as is neces-
sary for securing its possession; in other words,
something like the Departements Haut-Rhin and
Bas-Rhin in their entirety, the greater part of Mo-
selle, and the lesser part of Meurthe. The Virgin im-
age, which so long stood boastfully over the arms of
Metz, and which defied even the hosts of Charles V,
shall be struck to the ground by our good sword
to-day. The brave Saxon troops were permitted
to aid in reconquering the fortress with the sacri-
fice of which the Saxon Maurice commenced the
long period of German humiliation. It ill befits a
people rising to new greatness to abandon the
spot where the justice of its destiny has so visibly
prevailed. The comfort of the French at Metz is
of little importance compared with the necessity
of securing its natural capital, and a strong bul-
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? What We Demand from France 121
wark, for the province of Lorraine. In the pro-
gress of time, German ways of Hfe will find a home
once more in the ancient episcopal city. As for
measures of force against their nationality: they
need no more be feared by the Gauls of Lorraine
and the inhabitants of the few Gallic-speaking
villages of the Vosges, than they have had to be
feared by the brave Walloons in Malmedy and
Montjoie, who at this day rival their German
fellow-citizens in faithful self-devotion.
If a livelier sense of their common duties and
interests prevailed in the family of European
States, the arrogant disturber of their peace would
have to be humbled far more deeply. He would
be forced to give up Savoy and Nice to Italy, and
West Flanders, famous from of old, with Dun-
kirk, with Lille -- the ancient Ryssel -- with Douai,
on whose town-hall the Flemish lion still brand-
ishes the weather-flag, to Belgium. But the vis
inerticE, the fear which fills Europe at the thought
of any violent change, and the secret mistrust with
which all the States regard the new Germany, will
hardly permit so thorough a reconstruction of
the political system of Europe.
The German territory which we demand is ours
by nature and by history. It is true that here,
where the Rhine still rushes along as an untamed
stream from the glaciers, changing its bed accord-
ing to its will, the people on its opposite banks
maintain no such lively intercourse as below
Mainz. The traveller who passes from an Alsatian
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? 122 What We Demand from France
village towards the Rhine has often to make long
detours through bushes and rolHng stones, past
morasses in which the Rhine formerly had its bed,
and he is not unf requently detained for an hour by
the riverside, until a wretched boat ferries him
across to one of the castles of the KaiserstuhL
But, after all, no greater difficulties beset the in-
tercourse between the high-lying lands of Baden
and the Uberrhein than that between the Baden
and the Bavarian Palatinate, or between Starken-
burg and Rhenish Hesse. Nature herself meant
that the plain of the Upper Rhine should have a
common destiny, and has environed it with mount-
ain walls of the same formation. On either bank
the moimtain range reaches its greatest height to
the south; for the peasant of the Breisgau, the
Ballon d'Alsace serves as a weather-glass, just as
the Sundgau man on the other side gazes upon the
Schwarzwald Belchen and the Blue Mountain
(dem Blauen). On either bank the lovely scenery
displays its full beauty where a cross valley comes
forth out of the mountain-chain, where the
Engelsburg commands the entrance to the valley
of the Thur, where the three castles of Rappolt-
stein look down into the narrow gorge, where the
ancient fastness, Hoh-Barr, rises from the red
rock of the valley of the Zom -- just as on the
opposite side at Freiburg, Offenburg, and Baden.
A trade-road of hoar antiquity crosses the middle
of the plain, passing through the Wasgau at the
Zabem Stair, through the Schwarzwald at Pforz-
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? What We Demand from France 123
heim gate, connecting the Westerreich, to use the
expression of our fathers, with the interior of Ger-
many. Where it crosses the river Hes Strassburg,
the Cologne of the Upper Rhine, with her Minster
visible as a landmark in a wide circuit of Upper
Germany, as the Cathedral of Cologne stands in the
districts of Berg. A glorious panorama of German
scenery! This thought has most assuredly sug-
gested itself to everyone who has stood, in the
freshness of morning, when the shreds of the mists
still cling to the rocky summits upon the walls of
Schlettstadt. High up on the mountains tower
the dark pine-forests, which are hardly known
in the woodless Gaulish country ; lower down those
bright chestnut-woods, which no man who has
once made the Rhine his home can bear to miss;
on the slopes, the gardens of the vines; and down
below, that undulating, odorous plain, the mere
recollection of which charmed from Goethe in his
old age glowing words of praise for his ''glorious
Alsace. " Even we of the younger generation,
who are more familiar with the beauty of the
mountains, and have a duller sense for the charms
of the plain than the people of the eighteenth
century, cannot help joining in the enthusiasm of
the old Master-poet, as he describes the broad
fruit-trees in the midst of the corn-field, the ancient
limes of the Wanzenau, and the play of the sunlight,
caught and broken at numberless openings of the
wide waving plain.
German story winds its wondrous network
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? 124 What We Demand from France
round the hundred castles of the Sundgau as
closely as the ivy twining round their walls. Here
by the rushing waterfall the giant's daughter
ascended to the castle of Nideck, carrying the
peasant wight in her apron, plough and horses and
all. There on Tronja dwelt the dread Hagen of
the Nibelungs; high up on the Wasgenstein raged
the wild conflicts of our Song of Waltharius. Here,
in the valley of the Zom, Fridolin went his way to
the forge. There, by the Bergkirche, flows a
fountain of the tears of Ottilia, saint of sorrow and
suffering, like unto that which flows on the other
bank in the quiet recess of the valley near Freiburg.
Everywhere in the merry little land, German
humour and German merriment and enjoyment of
life held their jousts. The Count of Rappoltstein
was the king of all singers and errants of the Holy
Empire, and every year he summoned the master-
less Guild of Jesters to a joyous Diet of Pipers. In
the town-hall of Miilhausen is preserved to this day
the chattering-stone {Klapper stein), which used
to be hung round the necks of quarrelsome women.
Without the golden wine of Rangen the delicate
spire of the Church of St. Theobald at Thann could
never have risen so boldly into the air; for it was a
prosperous vintage, and the grape-gatherers came
to the rescue of the despairing architect and mixed
fiery must with his mortar, lest the joists of the
airy edifice should fall asunder.
Alsace has always maintained an honourable
place in the earlier history of German Art. A
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? What We Demand from France 125
thousand years ago the famous Ottfried, in his
monk's cell at Weissenburg, wrote his Krist, the
most ancient great monument of old German
poetry which has come down to our time. Gott-
fried of Strassburg sang the passionate lay of
Tristan and Isolda, and Master Walther von der
Vogelweide proclaimed the poetic glories of Rein-
mar of Hagenau. Those marvels of Gothic archi-
tecture arose in Thann and Strassburg, and Martin
Schongauer painted his simple-minded pictures for
the good town of Colmar. Above all the jest and
the mocking play of wit have remained ever dear
to the joyous sons of our frontier-land. Nearly
all the noteworthy humorists of our earlier litera-
ture were natives of Alsace, or, at all events, soci-
ally connected with the district. In Strassburg
the liberal-minded and lovable wag, Sebastian
Brandt, wrote his Ship of Fools, and Thomas
Mumer his malicious satires against the Luther-
ans. George Wickram, who, in his Rollwagen
(country wagon) , collected the merriest conceits of
our ancestors, was a Colmar boy; and in Forbach
dwelt Fischart, the mightiest among the few
Germans who have manifested power amounting
to genius in comic poetry.
And what a busy mixture of political forces,
what power and boldness of German civic life,
there gathered in the little land in the days when
the lions of the Hohenstaufen still gazed down as
lords and masters from the royal citadel above.
Eleven free cities of the Empire, among them
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? 126 What We Demand from France
Hagenau, the favourite city of Barbarossa, which
he entrusted with the imperial jewels, and, out-
shining all the rest, Strassburg. What has the
capital of the Departement Bas-Rhin done, or seen
done, that might be even compared to the ancient
history -- great in its smallness, proud in its mod-
esty -- of the German Imperial city?