The New York herald., 1921-11-20

Frances recovery of her lost
provinces, Alsace and Lor-
raine, will occur next Friday, No
venber rs. On that day,s three
years ago, the Tricolor was hoisted
on the tower of Strasbourg's beau
tiful cathedral after fifty years of
banishment.
There are few, if any, con-
sequences of the war more interest
ing or more important than the ef-
fort France is making to assimilate
Alsace and Lorraine after half
century of German domination.
To learn the results of three years
of this effort, THE NEW YORK
HERALD recently sent the chief
of its Paris Bureau to the two
provinces to make thorough
study. His article follows:
BY LAURENCE HILLS.
Special Correspondence TO THE NEW YORK
HERALD.
Copyright. 1921, by THE NEW YORK HERALD.
New York Herald Bureau,
Paris, Nov. 8. !
TO-DAY, three years after the German
troops retired across the Rhine,
Alsace-Lorraine is topsyturvy land.
Perhaps it would be better to call it a land
only half turned around. How long it will
take to turn the other half is hard to tell.
In their fifty years of administration
the Germans had made Alsace-Lorraine
face the fatherland, never patriotically, but
economically and by force politically. They
had Germanized the schools, Germanized
all the system of law and pretty well Ger
manized all of the business practice.
The people who believed that Alsace-Lor-
raine after these fifty years could be turned
completely around over night and made to
face France had not counted upon all this.
The fact that it is only half turned around
after three years of desperate struggling
with the problem by the French admins
tration is to them the cause to-day of much
disappointment and complaint. The real
Alsatians who want to be French are COM
planning bitterly that they are yet neither
one thing nor the other. French politi-
clans are complaining that this is because
the people of Alsace-Lorraine do not seem
to want to be either one thing or the other.
AS one French official in Strasbourg ex-
pressed it to THE New YORK HERALD cor
respondent: I'VE tried to put on a ready
made French suit here and found that they
had to have one made to ORDER
Half the Laws Are German
And Language Is a tumble
That the country is only half turned
around is evident the moment one crosses
the Vosges. Fifty per cent. of the laws
under which the people are living and try
ing to do business are still German laws
A man does business under the French,
commercial law, but goes to jail under
the German penal code French teachers
in the schools are trying to teach the
three Rs IN French to children whose lam
guage many Of them do not speak The
universities are without their full compile
ment of professors because there have not
been found enough Frenchmen or enough
intellectuals among the Alsace-L Lorraine
population to take the places of the German
intellectuals, all of whom cleared out of
he country after the armistice and have
been forbidden to reenter it.
Out of this half turned around situation
with its resultant confusion and complaint
German propagandists inside and outside
of Alsace-Lorraine are now trying to make
all the capital they can. They are pointing
to the present mdldise as evidence that the
German peace delegation was justified in
asking a plebiscite before this region was
restored to France. They are insisting
that IL self-determination we're applied to
this region to-day it would either vote to
he German again or a neutral State under
the League of Nations.
Nothing could be further from the fact
Neither at the time Of the Peace Confer
ence nor at any time since would the senti-
ment Of this region Justify such claims.
OF course, plebiscite would be out of the
question, anyway Nothing but superior
force will ever take these provinces away
from France again.
That Alsace-Lorraine was not mistake
of the Peace Conference so far as the
wishes of a majority of its population were
concerned one can find who goes there.
THE HERALD correspondent convinced him
self of this after a trip made from one
end to the other of this interesting region
Resembling Pennsylvania, IL is probably
richer than any other corresponding area
of France with iron coal oil and nota oh