New Britain herald., 1918-03-02
PINCHON HAS PROOF
 HUN SOUGHT WAR
Germany Wanted French Forts
 Before Attacking Russia

! government ueIerIn1nauOn to force
 war upon France and the other set-
 ting forth the reasons which induced
 Germany to take Alsace-Lorraine,
 were made public late yesterday by
 stephen Pichon, the French foreign
 minister. The minister was speaking in the Sorbonne upon the anniver- l sary of the protest made by repre- ! sentatives of the national assembly of A1sace-Lorrain against annexation to Germany
 T will establish by documents' said M. Pichon, ''that the day the Germans deliberately rendered inevit- | able the most frightful of wars they tried to dishonor us by the most cowardly complicity in the ambush into which they drew Europe. I will establish it in the revelation of a document that the German chancel- Tor after having drawn up preserved carefully, and you will see why, in the most profound mystery of the most secret archives.
 I've have known only recently of 1t authenticity, and it defes any sort of attempt to disprove it. It bears the signature of Bethmann- HollWeg (Gernan Imperial chance1- Tor at the outbreak of the war; and the date July 31, 1914 On that day Won Schoen (German ambassador to France) was charged by a telegram from his chancellor to notify us of a state Of danger of war with Russia and to ask us to remain neutral, giv- ing us eighteen hours in which to re- reply.
 a WA oIyr, was that the telegram of the German chancellor containing these instruc- tons terminated with these words: If the French government de- clares it will remain neutral your ex- cellency will be good enough to de- clare that we must as a guarantee of it's neutrality require the handing over of the fortresses of Toul and Verdun; that we will occupy them, and will restore them after the end of the war with Russia. A reply to this last question must reach here before Saturday afternoon at f o'clock
 Proof Germany Sought War.
 That" said M. Pinchon, lis how Germany wanted peace at the mom- ent when she declared war. That is how sincere she was in pretending that we obliged her to take up arms for her defence. That is the price she intended to make Us pay for our baseness if we had had the infamy to repudiate our signature as Prus- sia repudiated hers by tearing up the treaty that guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium.
 @Our mortal enemy in the war of 1871. Won Moltke, declared on the morrow of the treaty of Frankfort said Foreign Minister Pichon on talk ing up the question of Alsace-LOr- raine, that it would require no less than fifty years to wean the heart of her lost provinces from France
 M. Pichon contrasted the German acceptance then that the provinces were in reality French with the re- 1terated pretensions of German states men since, especially the assertions of former Chancellor Bethman- -Hollweg and the present Chancellor, Count von Hertling, that most of the prov inces were always German. Better Prepared For Next War. The Foreign Minister made public for the first time the full text of a letter written by William T., the grandfather of the present German
  letter is dated Versailles, October 26, 1870.
 1 After the imm ense sacrifices for her defense,'' read M. Pichon, Ger l many desires to be assured that the next war will find her better prepared | to repel the aggression upon which we can count as soon as France siiali | have repaired her forces and gained l allies. This is the melancholy con- i sideration alone, and not a desire to i augment my country, whose territory 1 is sufficiently great, that obliges mo | to insist upon the cession of terri 1 tories that has no other object than | to throw back to the starting point | the French armies that in the future 1 will come to attack us''
 After reading this passage M. l Pichon asked:
 Can one better destroy the legend Von Hertling tries to establish that l the annexation of Alsace-Lorralne had for its origin in the minds of it's authors the wish to return to Ger many German provinces of which she had been dispossessed by French
 usurpation?"
 The foreign minister pointed out 1 that Prince von Bismark in subse- Quent conversations with the Marquis
 de Babriac, then French charge d'Affaires at Berlin, confirmed what his sovereign had written in his own 1 hand. M. Pichon then cited the l words of Frederick II. when entering | Silesia: q take possession first. I
 shall always find dependents to prove | my right" and added:
 'But the rights of the German over
 our provinces have never been proved
 by any pedant because it cannot be l done"
 M. Pichon recalled that from the time of Louis XIV A1sace- Lorraine