(p. 282)

*304. Original Problem of Organization.*--By the terms of the Peace of
Frankfort, May 10, 1871, France ceded to Germany the province of
Alsace and a portion of that of Lorraine--an aggregate of 5,605 square
miles of hotly disputed territory whose population, while in
considerable measure German, was none the less predominantly French.
The position assigned the newly acquired territory within the Empire
was anomalous. It was determined by two principal considerations:
first, the fact that the districts comprised conquered territory
inhabited by a discontented people and liable both to domestic
disorder and foreign invasion; and, second, the further fact that the
newly established Empire consisted of a federation of semi-autonomous
states, into which subordinate territory acquired by war could not
easily be made to fit. The annexed lands might conceivably have been
erected, in 1871, into the twenty-sixth state of the Empire; but in no
quarter was this policy so much as suggested. They might have been
incorporated with one of the existing states, or divided among two or
more of them; but this would have involved friction at a time when the
stability of the new regime was not yet assured. The only course that
to the statesmen and jurists of the day appeared feasible was to hold
the new territories as the joint property of the states, under the
sovereign control of the Imperial Government; and the arrangement hit
upon in the execution of this policy was perpetuated, with
modification only of administrative machinery, from 1871 until almost
the present day.

*305. The Imperial Basis of Government.*--Prior to the enactment of the
controverted Alsace-Lorraine Constitution Bill of 1911 Alsace-Lorraine
was not a member of the German federation, but was, on the contrary, a
mere dependency--a Reichsland, or Imperial territory. Beginning with a
virtual dictatorship on the part of the Emperor, established under act
of June 9, 1871, the governmental arrangements within the territory
passed through a number of stages of elaboration. In the main, the
organs of government employed until 1911, and a large proportion of
those still in operation, were created, or perpetuated, by the
constitutional statute of July 4, 1879. By this instrument the
sovereignty of the territories was vested specifically in the Empire;
the exercise of that sovereignty was vested in the Kaiser, acting
alone or in conjunc