_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
Although I hate to enter into a controversy with Prof. Kuno Francke, who
was once my excellent friend, I cannot refrain from answering his
article which appeared in last Sunday's NEW YORK TIMES.
How can any one say, in all fairness, that Germany's policy toward
France during the last forty-three years has been one of the utmost
restraint and forbearance, and has been dictated by the one desire to
make her forget the loss of the two provinces? What are the facts? We
know that not once, but again and again, since 1878, Germany has tried
to provoke France into war. We know that on one occasion Queen Victoria
herself threatened the Kaiser with Great Britain's intervention if he
did not desist from his intended attack on France. And to cite only the
two most recent instances, the Agadir affair and the enforced
resignation of the French Premier, Delcassé! Would Germany have
swallowed such insults?
This may be the German conception of "utmost restraint and forbearance,"
but it appeared to the French, as it did to the rest of the world, that
it required their utmost restraint and forbearance to remain calm under
the affronts.
The fact that Alsace-Lorraine was German up to the seventeenth century,
and inhabited by German stock, cannot be brought forward today, after
more than 200 years, to justify the retaking of those provinces by the
Germans. The whole world would be in a state of continual warfare if
nations claimed provinces or States that belonged to them once upon a
time. Richelieu's idea was that the Rhine was the natural and
geographical frontier between France and Germany, and the war was
undertaken to carry out that plan. Since then the inhabitants have
become French, and the attempts to re-Germanize them have proved futile.
Prof. Francke may well doubt if the acquisition of these provinces was a
fortunate thing for Germany. It was undoubtedly the most unfortunate
thing not only for Germany but for France and the rest of Europe, for it
kept open a wound which might have been healed either by a return of the
lost provinces, with or without compensation, or by granting them
autonomy, or, better still, by leaving it to the inhabitants to choose
for themselves, as France did with Nice and Savoy.
The ruthless methods of a Bismarck are no longer of this age. They are
too odious, and the human conscience revolts at them. What a
preposterous idea, in this twentieth century, to compel by force
millions of people to renounce their traditions and even their
language! If Great Britain had followed the same method in dealing with
the French Canadians, instead of loyal subjects she would have made
rebels of them all.
It is neither right nor just nor truthful to say that Germany has done
her best during the last four decades to heal the wounds struck by her
to French national pride. On the contrary, Germany's attitude has been
all along one of studied provocation; and if the instances already
mentioned are not sufficient, many others could be added.
Germany abetted French colonial expansion. Well, by what right should
she have opposed it? And if she yielded to France in Morocco, it was
only after France had given Germany part of her African possessions
rather than go to war with her.
It will be news to the world to be informed that there can be no
reasonable doubt that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been gradually
settling down to willing co-operation with the German administration.
Certainly such a statement is in violent contradiction with all we hear
and read and know of the state of mind, the feelings, and aspirations of
the inhabitants of those two provinces.
To argue that the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine is not a vital
necessity to France; that without these provinces she has recovered her
prosperity and her prestige, and that it is mere illusion to think that
the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine would add to her glory is pure
sophistry. It is just as if you said to a man whom you had robbed of
some valuable property: "What does it matter? You are just as well off
without it." Yes, Prof. Larson did voice the sentiment of the vast
majority of his countrymen when he stated that France could not and
would not recognize the treaty of Frankfurt. If I have an enemy who
takes me by surprise and with revolver leveled at my head compels me to
sign a paper by which I despoil myself to his advantage, what is the
validity of such a document?
That is the way that all Frenchmen of all classes look upon the treaty
of Frankfurt, wrung from them under duress.
The term "revanche" is a slogan. It simply typifies in one word the
reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine; but it does not carry with it the idea of
willfully laying waste the enemy's country, burning and pillaging,
shooting inoffensive non-combatants, and cleaning banks of all the gold
they contain.
Another statement which is misleading in Prof. Francke's article is the
one which refers to the "growing menace from France," in which he speaks
of the increasing armament that has been going on in that country since
1912. But what is called in Germany "the menace from France" is called
in the latter country "the menace from Germany." Who started these
enormous armaments? Each time Germany increased her army France was
forced to do the same; and when France recently increased from two to
three years the duration of military service, it was her only way of
meeting Germany's increase of 500,000 men.
The attempt to change the rôles and present France to the world as the
aggressor, or even as premeditating an attack upon Germany, is futile.
It is a strange and yet not uncommon psychological fact that the hate of
the conqueror is often greater than that of the conquered; and it is
German, not French, hate which has forced Germany into this savage war.
France had recovered too rapidly from her disasters; she was too rich;
her colonies were too vast and too prosperous; she must be crushed. What
right had she to have large colonies when Germany, the superior nation,
had none worth mentioning? There you have the key to the Kaiser's
repeated provocations and to his final attack.
In regard to England and Russia, the writer will simply confine himself
to the statement that if the German Imperial Government can produce as
clean a bill of health as the "White Paper" of the British Foreign
Office, just published, it will do more to convince American public
opinion of the justice of its cause than anything that has yet been
written in the press by Germans and their sympathizers.