that all those qualities which distinguish the Germans
from the French are found to such a high degree in
Alsace-Lorraine, that the inhabitants of this country
formed—I may say it without fear of seeming
presumption—an aristocracy in France as
regards proficiency and exactness. They were
better qualified for service, and more reliable in
office. The substitutes in the army, the gendarmes,
and the civil officers were from Alsace-Lorraine in
numbers entirely out of proportion to the population
of these provinces. There were one and one half
million Germans who knew how to make use of these
virtues among a people who have other virtues but
who are lacking in these particular ones. Thanks
to their excellence they enjoyed a favored position,
which made them unmindful of many legal iniquities.
It is, moreover, characteristic of the Germans that
every tribe lays claim to some kind of superiority,
especially over its immediate neighbors. As long
as the people of Alsace and Lorraine were French,
Paris with its splendor and the grandeur of a united
France stood behind them; they could meet their fellow
Germans with the consciousness that Paris was theirs,
and thus find a reason for their sense of exclusive
superiority. I do not wish to discuss further
the reasons why everyone attaches himself more readily
to a big political system which gives scope to his
abilities, than to a divided, albeit related, nation,
such as existed formerly on this side of the Rhine,
in so far as the Alsatians were concerned. The
fact is that such disinclination existed, and that
it is our duty to overcome it by patience. We
have, it seems to me, many means at our disposal.
We Germans are accustomed to govern more benevolently,
sometimes more awkwardly—but in the long
tun really more benevolently and humanely, than the
French statesmen. This is a merit of the German
character which will soon appeal to the Alsatian heart
and become manifest. We are, moreover, able to
grant the inhabitants a far greater degree of communal
and individual freedom than the French institutions
and traditions ever permitted.
If we watch the present movement in Paris (the Commune),
we shall find, what is true of every movement possessing
the least endurance, that it contains at bottom a
grain of sense in spite of all the unreasonable motives
which attach to it, influencing its individual partisans.
Without this no movement can attain even that degree
of force which the Commune exercises at present.
This grain of sense—I do not know how many
people believe in it, but surely the most intelligent
and best who at present are fighting against their
countrymen do believe in it—is, to put it
briefly, the German municipal government. If
the Commune possessed this, then the better element
of its supporters—I do not say all—would
be satisfied. We must differentiate according
to the facts. The militia of the usurpers consists
largely of people who have nothing to lose. There
are in a city of two million inhabitants many so-called