onciliation--the loss by France of the
fair provinces Alsace and Lorraine. It is of no use for Germany to
remind France that up to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 this
territory belonged to Germany, or rather to what then was known by
that name. It was useless as well as ungracious for Bismarck to tell
France to seek compensation in Africa for what she had lost in Europe.
Like Rachel mourning for her children, France will not be comforted;
and now, as from the heavy hour in which she lost the provinces, she
grieves over the memory of them and nurses the hope, still mingled
with hate, of one glorious day regaining them. There are sanguine
spirits who assert that the old feeling is dying out, and the German
Government studiously encourages that view. It may be so; time is
having its obliterating effects; and in externals at least the
Germanization of the provinces is slowly making progress. Still the
wound is deep, and there seems no prospect of its healing.

Several suggestions have been made with a view to an arrangement that
might leave France without reason, or with less reason, for constant
meditation on revenge One of them is the neutralization of
Alsace-Lorraine on the model of Belgium, while another is the
distribution of the territory, so that while Alsace is divided between
Baden and Bavaria, Lorraine becomes a part of Prussia A third would
divide the provinces between the two nations. An illustration of the
yet prevailing feeling is found in the fact that large Alsatian firms
invariably use French in their correspondence with Berlin firms, and
almost as invariably refer to the "customs-arrangement" with Germany
in 1871. They cannot bring themselves to use the word "annexation."

Yet of late years--to anticipate somewhat the course of
events--Germany has made two important concessions to Alsace-Lorraine.
The first was the abrogation of the so-called "Dictator-Paragraph,"
which was part of the law for administering the new provinces after
the war of 1870. Under the paragraph the Lieutenant-Governor
(Oberpresident) of the Reichsland, as the newly incorporated territory
is now officially known, was empowered in case of need to take command
of the military forces and proclaim a state of siege. When announcing
the abrogation of the Paragraph in the Reichstag in 1902, Chancellor
von Buelow gave a resume of the relations of the provinces to the
Empire since 1870. He stated that immediately after the war the
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