The Washington herald., 1914-12-27

~ ward every able-bodied man
within her borders to resist
German invasion, is now fight
ing her enemy with literature and art
Bergson, the philosopher; Clemenceau.
the statesman; Anatole France, the lit
terateur; Maurice Denis. Picasso and
Martin, all well-known artists, are hurl-
ing heavy broadsides at the Germans,
which are going far towards keeping up
the spirit and courage of the French.
But. strangely enough, a man less IA
nous than any of these great characters
has done far more than all of them put
together to keep up French cheer and to
maintain resentment against the Germans
at the boiling point
He is the Frenchman, Jacob Waltz, a
satirical writer and artist, who spends his
time between Paris and Alsace Not long
ago, under the pseudOnym of Hansi he
wrote a book: Mon Village" in English
my Village" in which he dealt in a hu-
morOus and satirical manner with life in
a village in AlsaCe. He was living in
Alsace at the time. and so lavish was he
in his criticism of Germany and the Ger
mans and so highly did he praise the
French that the Germans sentenced him
to year in prison.
Waltz fed back to France and escaped
serving the sentence. Immediately he
set to work and wrote another book
THE History of Alsace for Little Chill
dren, Told by Their Uncle Hansi." 1t
was violently anti-German in every line
1t came out shortly after war was de-
Clared between the two countries and
Just about at the time that "Hansi," be-
ing French reservist, traded his pen for
a bayonet.
Originally Alsace and Lorraine. as
everyone knows, were German provinces.
They were inhabited by Germans and
ruled by Germans until the time of Louis
XIV. Louis was a conquering monarch
and he sent his great Marshal Turenne
across the Vosges with an army and after
conQuertng these two provinces annexed
them. For a great number of years they
remained in French possession until the
war of 1870 came along, when Germany
took them back to herself. II is with this
history that "Hansi" deals in his own way.
Although printing and bookmaking in
France is almost at a standstill Hansi
has succeeded in having a fair number Of
copies of his book published. Several
have made their way to America. In
preface bristling with bitter feeling and
almost hate for the Germans Hansi tells
why he wrote his book:
my sojourn at the German school at
Colmar is one of the worst memories of
my life The stupid monotony of the
lessons Of Greek and Latin, the hard
ships of the course in German, with its
insipid patriotic poems with which we
were saturated, the insults by which our
teacher reYenged himself for our grins
when he imagined that he was teaching
us French, all this sort of thing poisons
the childhood of little Alsatians. -s
But all these sorrows, all these hu-
miliations, even the slaps, the singing
slaps, which left the blush of shame on
ones brow and on ones cheek the mark
from the Herr Professors big ring, all
this was nothing to what we suffered
during the history lesson.
There above all they tried to German
ize us by heaping sarcasm and insult on
all that was dear to US, while forcing us
at the same time TO learn the history OF
-russia, the history of a people foreign