The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-02-26
ALSACE AND LORRAINE

It was forty-five years ago to-day. on Feb. 26, 1871, that Thiers, Favre,
 and fifteen delegates from the nation al assembly solemnly and sadly at tached their signatures to the treaty whereby Alsace-Lorraine ceased to be
 French territory, and passed into the
 possession of Germany. When the prelinninaries of peace came to be dis cussed at Versailles, the cession of AL Sace, together with what is called German Lorraine, was one of the
 earliest conditions laid down by
 territory aroused great grief and in-'
 dignation throughout France, but es- pecially in the provinces about to be
 given up. Thoroughly beaten, France could do nothing but yield to
 the demands of the conqueror, and the National Assembly confirmed the treaty.
 From that day the loss of the terri tory on her eastern front has never
 ceased to trouble France, and from that day. the people of the republic have nourished the idea of ire vanche" against the Teutons.
 It is the German contention that Alsace-Lorraine rightfully belongs to the Kaiser's Empire, since it was German territory for many centuries
 sass, as the Germans call it-has all
 ways been more or less disputed ter
 ritory. Originally it was French,
 having been a part of Gaul in the pc riod of the Roman dominion. AIsace next passed under the power of the Franks. From the sixth to the eighth
 centuries Alsace was a part of the
 kingdom of Austrasia, which came to
 an end when Pepin became sole king of France in TAT. Alsace became 9 part of the French empire of -CharIe- magne. In the tenth century Alsace hac a nd no f.
 ed with the German empire. Lor-
 raine, which had been a kingdom in
 the ninth century. also passed to the domination of the Austrian house. A considerable portion of Alsace
 was restored to France by the treaty
 of Westphalia in 1648. as a result of the Thirty Years War. Tn 1887 the
 French captured Strassburg, and in 1897 practically the whole of Alsace
 was ceded to France. Mulhausen was not acquired, however, until af- ter the revolution of 1789.
 During the two centuries Of the last French occupation the people of
 the country, who during the long Ger
 man domination had taken on dis
 tinctly Teutonic cast, became more perhaps a majority were of pure Ger
 man descent. Alsaee was as patrio otic and loyal to France as any other part of the nation, and the same was true or Lorraine, which became trench
 just a century and d half ago, at the
 death of Stanislaus l., the deposed
 king of Poland. who had been given
 the crown of Lorraine for life.
 When Germany annexed Alsace and a part of Lorraine forty-dve years ago today, the people were thorough, Sly French in sentiment and sympa-
 thies, and in the period that has 5elapsed the Kaiser's government has
 not found it possible to completely
 banish from the memories of Asa tians their old spirit of allegiance to
 France. Forty-dve thousand Asa tians left their homes soon after the German occupation, and their places were soon taken by Germans. The
 newcomers are naturally loyal to the Fatherland, but among those of the
 older families there are many who re-
 the Germans, and are still French at heart.
 At the present time. Alsace occu-
 pies the unfortunate position of
 country. divided against itself How
 this condition can be remedied to the
 satisfaction of any considerable ma jority of the people 1t is difficult to see.4 If it remains German, the old spirit of hatred and dis1oya,lty will
 persist; if it should become French territory again, the now large Ger
 man population would be equally dis
 satisfied. In any event, it would seem.
 Alsace must remain a bone of con- tention and a possible source of other
 wars in the future