The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1914-08-11

plorers, soldiers and civilians alike, have
carried the tricolor to the heart o.
Africa and to the capitals OF the Shsree-s
fan empire and Timbuktu on the south
ern edge OF the great Sahara has It's
boulevard d'Alsace.Lorraine and casa
blanca its Rue de Strasburg. All over
the RaDyle highlands OF Algeria, where
a handful of French colonists are taking
up the task of creating new France,
the names of the cities and towns OF
Alsace and Lorraine, Bitche, Metz, Col
mar appear as frequently as those OF
fortunate battlehelds in the happier his
tory of France.
Something there has been of grandeur,
something almost commanding the sym
patty of the least Francophile OF observ-
ers in the forty-four years OF fidelity to
an idea and an ideal. German writers,
Won Buellow, Bernhard himself, with
all his antagonsm, have not hestated TO
pay tribute to the sacrifices, the bur
dens that great nation has voluntarily
laid upon itself that it might still hope
to regain its surrendered Rhineland
The least observing travellers are in
France, wandering in districts as far
from Lorraine as the Pyrenees of the Ri
viera, have not failed to report that even
there the unconquered and uncon.
querable longing for the redemption OF
'the lost provinces" was observable, in
fact hardly to be escaped, at every turn.
A whole nation, amidst all the eddies
and tides of ephemerai political excite
ment and passion, something in the
spirit of Gambetta who bade Frenehmen
never to forget and never to talk, has
kept burning the candle Of hope before
the akar of national resolution.
The rights and wrongs OF the question
itself, these are beside the point.
Whether Alsace is German by right, was
French by spoilation, is German again
by act of supreme justice, who can or
will begin to discuss the techniealities
The single fact is that the French have
in some fashion and by arts all their
own imposed upon the whole world save
its German fraction something of their
own feeling, which responds to the early
fragmentary reports that the tri-color Is
again in the land of Ney and Keller
mann, Rapp and Lobau, in the land
which has given France so many sol
diers and such splendid loyalty in other
days.
As for Alsace Lorraine what observer
from a neutral land will venture to say
how loyal these ''lost provinces are to
their old possessors This much at least
appears. 1t was only few months ago
that the incident of Saverne, when a
whole town turned out TO mock Prus.
sian officer and goad him to fury, filled
the press. The latest foreign news
papers recount the fight OF Hansi, the
Alsation caricat urist, from Alsace after
condemnation for the grievous offence Of
lampooning Prussian soldiers.
In the German parliament there still
sit representatives of Alsace-Lorraine
who belong to the "non-conforming"
faction. All over Alsace and Lorraine
there are societies and associations for
keeping alive the old memory. In the
foreign legion in Africa there are hum
dreds of Alsatians who left home for
ever rather than wear the Kaiser's coat.
Won Bernhardi score of other German
commentators have conceded with sur
prising frankness the success of the
French in retaining the affection of the
lost children.
All these circumstances, hundred
more, combine to give to the slight mill
tary operations, for it is idle to regard
the skirmishes Of Altkirch and Muelhau-
sen as important in themselves, real
meaning to the world, to the world
which, rightly or wrongly, through weak
ness of mind or through sentiment
which finds no warrant in the fact, is
reused to-day at the thought of the lit
tie red legged soldiers sweeping down
the valley OF the III, where once Turenne
triumphed, ito redeem" the lost prov
inces.
There is no nobler instance of the
arising OF a whole people than that of
the Germans themselves when in 1913,
peasant and poet, soldier, scholar, a
whole race sprang to arms to drive Ma
poeon from the Fatherland. Is il too
soon to detect in French and Belgian OPP
erations something OF the same spirit so
fatal alike to the strategists and TO the
military genius of Napoleons IN. Y.