of Prussia have steadily increased their estrangement, despite their share in the commercial prosperity of the Empire.  Those who know intimately the undercurrents of feeling in Alsace-Lorraine are unanimous in asserting that if before last July an impartial plebiscite, without fear of the consequences, could have been taken among the inhabitants, an overwhelming majority would have voted for reunion with France.  But having once been the battleground of the two nations and living in permanent dread of a repetition of the tragedy, the leaders of political thought in Alsace and Lorraine favoured a less drastic solution.  They knew that Germany would not relinquish her hold nor France renounce her aspirations without another armed struggle; but they believed that the grant of real autonomy within the Empire, such as would place them on an equal footing with Wuertemberg or Baden, would render their position tolerable, and by removing the chief source of friction between France and Germany, create the groundwork for more cordial and lasting relations between Germany and the two Western Powers.[1] Now that the nightmare of war has once more fallen upon them, the situation has radically changed, and there can be no question that in the event of a French victory the provinces would elect to return to France.  The fact that several of their leading politicians have fled to France and identified themselves with the French cause, is symptomatic, though doubtless not conclusive.  That the government of the Republic, if victorious, will make the retrocession of Alsace-Lorraine its prime condition of peace, is as certain as anything can be certain in the seething pot to which triumphant militarism has reduced unhappy Europe.  It may, then, seem merely pedantic to refer to an alternative solution; and yet there is unquestionably a great deal to be said in favour of forming the two provinces into an independent State, or better still, uniting them in federal union with Luxemburg and Belgium.  Thus would be realised that “Middle Kingdom” which so many efforts have been made to create, from the days of Charlemagne onwards.  Henceforward the fate of Alsace-Lorraine would be neither French nor German; they would become a neutral clearing-house for the two cultures which have both come to be so inextricably bound up with the life and traditions of the border race.  At the same time the most fertile source of friction between France and Germany would be removed, and the two countries would no longer glare at each other across a frontier bristling with fortifications.

[Footnote 1:  This ideal was being actively pursued by many thoughtful people on both sides of the frontier.  Only last June I was discussing it at some length with a prominent Alsatian deputy and various other friends in Berlin.]