New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-12-30
With France

Friday made simple, SUalghIoI"aIu
declaration Of French war aims. France,
he explained, sought only the evacuation
Of her occupied districts, the indemnifca-
ton of her citizens for wanton injury and
the return Of Alsace-Lorraine. Beyond
this France, for herself, sought nothing,
although she stood with President Wilson
on the question of guarantees against a
new war to be sought in a league Of
nations.
These are the French war aims. They
ask for France nothing but her own-that
taken three years and a half ago and that
taken forty-six years ago, in each case
with the same defiance Of justice, right,
humanity. IF Germany is 70 hold Metz she
might as we'll hold Lille; her claim to
Cambria is as good in right as her claim
to Strasburg.
Now, what are we Americans to feel and
to say in the presence Of this statement Of
French war aims? For forty-one months
France has stood in the breach-offered
her body to the storm Of barbarism. More
than three million and half Frenchmen
half the men Of military age and ca
pacitv-have been killed, wounded or
captured. While Britain was unready
France won the Marine and held Nerdun.
Her guns and her equipment are now being
lent to us, unready, too and French
armies are still holding that portion Of the
fortified frontiers of civilization which is
ours to hold, and which we cannot yet man.
When this war is over France will re-
main the chief bulwark against a new Ger
man onrush. If Germany secretly or
brazenly holds to her present gods, France
will have to meet the next assault as she
did the attack Of 1914 And France with
out Alsace-Lorraine neither can nor will.
IF the wrong of 1871 is now made perma-
lent by the settlement Of the present war,
France will never again face the bar
barian, whose quarrel is with us and with
Britain not with France.
We in America would not have accepted
in the last century settlement after
war with Britain which gave Maine to
British Canada because it was once, like
all the rest Of the Atlantic seaboard, Brit
ish soil and was necessary" to insure the
strategic safety Of Canada. But this is
the sole claim Of Germany to Alsace-Lor-
raine. The people passionately protested
their desire to be French; they have never
ceased TO do this; neither oppression nor
terrorism has subdued their spirit or
crushed their desire to be French.
France without her lost provinces is
strategically indefensible, industrially
crippled, morally enfeebled. We have un-
dertaken to repeal the German doctrine
Of force, Of violence, of 'blood and iron."
and the enduring application Of this doc
trine is revealed in Alsace-Lorraine. We
shall, in fact, recognize, not repeal. the
German doctrine if we make peace on
terms which leave Alsace-Lorraine to
Germany.
! We all feel keenly the wrong done
d Belgium in 1914. But Belgium, weak and
conquered, deserves no more Of us than
France, stricken but still standing Every
American newspaper for more than three
years has been filed with the yeracious
accounts Of the modern miracle which is
France. And for us for civilization. for
human liberty, France has suffered and
wellnigh died.
The world can never pay It's debt to
France. The Marine was for us Ameri.
cans another Yorktown, Verdun was for
Europe another Valmy-had either been
German victory We should have been
plunged backward into darkness for year.
beyond number. To-day France not only
holds our place in the Western line
but French troops are defending invaded
Italy and supporting stricken Serbia
With Lille and st. Quentin unredeemed
with Rheims and Arras under German
fire, French troops are defending Venice