Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1944-11-27
WORLD
IN REVIEW
BY Mai. Gen.
D. P. Barrows,

IN THE great battle for the
i German Rhineland the strug-
gle continues with increasing
stubbornness and ferocity.
American troops are reported
to be close to the railroad and
road center of Julich.
When this city and the com.
parable German point Of main
resistance, at Duren, are taken.
the prepared line Of German
defense along the Roer River
will be ruptured and Allied adj
vance opened to the Rhine and
to Cologne.
This Is the most decisive sec
tor on the western front and the
most critical for Germany. and
1t becomes clear that, strong as
German resistance is here. II II
Gen. Eisenhower's resolve to
breach IL, with consequences TO
the German armies that may b
fatal for them.
Meanwhile. at the southern
sector Of this front, the liberia
ton Of the French province Of
Alsace Is approaching.
The French First army n re-
ported to have entered the i'm
portant city of Muhlhausen, or
Mulhouse, while the left wing Of
Gen. Patchs Seventh Army u
moving around the Vosges
Mountains through Zabern on
Strassburg.
Whatever happens elsewhere,
IL looks as though Alsace would
very shortly be freed.
THIS province. which has bsen
L 50 many times contested
for, has a population that II
mainly Teutonlc in origin and
largely Protestant, but nearly
800 years ago il was annexed to-
the French kingdom by then
treaty of Westphalia.
Subsequent peace treaties
confirmed this and the popula-
ton became pro-French, with
no sign of evidence that IL de-
sired Incorporation in the Ger
man empire.
Such a process OF aSsimila-
ton OF people, alien in speech
and origin, is result rarely
attained in Europe.
IL seems to have been COM
pleted by the French Revolu-
ton, when no city contributed
more military and civil leaders
TO France than did this famous
Alsatian military town of
-StrassbGFg.
II was at Strassburg that the
French poet, Roger De Lisls
composed that clarion song Of
the revolution. still the national
anthem of the French republic.
La Marsellaise."
GERMAN national theory has
" long cultivated the idea
that all peoples of German
speech and origin must be In
corporated into the German
empire.
Their theorists are unable TO
understand how two peoples
like the Americans and Cana
dams, Of general common ORR
gin and common speech, can
live in peace and cooperation
under different sovereignties.
and without the lesser being
politically Incorporated into the
greater.
They regard this not merely
as unjustifiable, but as mon
strous. and as an evidence Of
the political weakness OF North
America.
Hence the German rapaclty
in demanding and Selling the
Sudetan area ofCzecho-S lovakia,I
TO which Saxon immigrants.
centuries before the unificauon
of Germany, had settled 10
work as miners in the hills Of
the Reichgebirge.
And hence their long covst-
BUSINESS TO possess Alsace.
The Germans took Alsace and
Lorraine, on this plea OF Teu-
tonic origin, in 1871.
Forty-five thousand Alsatians
sorrowfully abandoned their
homes, when the act Of session
was completed. and sought es-
cape from German rule.
Many of them colonized in
Algeria.
In the long interval between
1871 and the end Of the first
World War, while Alsace was
ruled from Berlin, many visi-
tors TO Paris will remember the
black-draped statutes OF AL
SAGE and Lorraine that stood on
the Place De La Concorde.
The defeat of Germany in the
First World War restored these
provinces to France.
The German republic, which
was overthrow by Hitler, ac-
cepted this restoration as final