And this is a thing which "the man in the street" fails sometimes to
understand. He says: "Yes, we know, Alsace-Lorraine was taken from
France forty-seven years ago by violence, without the people of the
occupied territories being consulted. But how did France acquire
Alsace-Lorraine in previous times? Was it not also by force after
successful wars? Is it not a fact that Alsace-Lorraine, in days of
yore, belonged to Germany, and that, historically, Alsace is a German
land?"
No, it is precisely not a fact. It is the contrary of a fact and of
truth. And this must be made clear, once for all.
When France demands Alsace-Lorraine, she does not do so because she
will have some more departments in her geographical configuration, but
because these territories belonged to France during centuries and
centuries, because they were taken from France by force forty-seven
years ago, because the people of these territories not only were never
consulted, but also protested against Prussian domination--because, in
a word, it is a question of right.
In a speech, which he delivered on the 24th of January, 1918, before
the Reichstag, Count von Hertling, the Imperial German Chancellor,
expressed himself as follows:
Alsace-Lorraine comprises, as is known, for the most part
purely German regions which by a century long of violence
and illegality were severed from the German Empire, until
finally in 1779 the French Revolution swallowed up the last
remnant.
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