spectacles, and holding his spelling-book with
both hands, he spelt the letters with them. One could see that he too
did his best; his voice trembled with emotion, and it was so funny to
hear him that we all wanted to laugh and cry at once. Ah! I shall
always remember that class.

Suddenly the clock of the church rang for noon, then for the Angelus.
At the same moment, the trumpets of the Prussians returning from drill
pealed out under our windows. M. Hamel rose from his chair, turning
very pale. Never had he looked to me so tall.

"My friends," he said, "my friends, I--I--" But something choked him.
He could not finish the sentence.

Then he turned to the blackboard, took a piece of chalk, and pressing
with all his might, he wrote as large as he could:--

VIVE LA FRANCE[1]

The determination of the people of Alsace and Lorraine not to submit to
the pressure of their conquerors was made evident even up to the very
day that war was declared in 1914. Von Moltke had predicted that "It
will require no less than fifty years to wean the hearts of her lost
Provinces from France." Notwithstanding all their efforts, the German
leaders in 1890 had said, "After nineteen years of annexation, German
influence has made no progress in Alsace." When the German soldiers at
the beginning of the World War entered the provinces, their officers
said to them, "We are now in enemy country."

This remark seems all the more strange because the population of the
provinces was largely German. Most of the French citizens had
emigrated to France, and all the young men had left to avoid German
military service and the possibility of being forced to fight France.
Many Germans had moved in. Indeed if at this late day a vote had been
taken, no doubt the majority would have expressed the desire to remain
under German rule. But Germany still considered the country as an
enemy. She knew the whole world disapproved of her seizing the
provinces. Therefore it did not surprise the German government to
learn that President Wilson, as one of the fourteen points to be
observed in making a permanent peace for the world, gave as the
eighth,--

"The wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871, in the matter of
Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly
fifty years should be righted."

At the foot of the Vosges mountains near the Lorraine border, the
American armies joined those of France. There in the Lorraine sec