He said: "We young fellows, we are not of the generation of 1870 whom choice and emigration have deprived of elements which are the firmest and most unresisting. If you do not introduce a more liberal régime, you will find by experience that this new generation is much more energetically opposed to fusion than has been the case since 1870." In fact, not only has Germanization made no progress, but the Alsatians become each day more impatient of the German yoke. The two populations, the native and immigrant, have never had social intercourse. The native societies or clubs have always been closed to the immigrant. On the National Fête, July 14th, the Alsatians will cross the frontier by tens of thousands to partake communion under the religion of their own land and with their brothers of France. They return with the tri-colour ribbon in their buttonholes, and this creates each year a number of unpleasant incidents. In vain Germany wished to change the appearance of things by trying to win the masses, by means of a lower chamber elected by general suffrage. We have shown the factitious value of this concession, which as a consequence only increased opposition. The affair of Grafenstaden, and the trouble at Saverne caused by the attempt to cover up the exactions of a young lieutenant, brought indignation to a climax. The military authorities arrested haphazard the civilian natives and even the German immigrants, instituting in the midst of peace, a military dictatorship and aroused the irreconcilable antagonism between the German mentality and that of Alsace-Lorraine. After some slight attempts of independence on the part of the Alsace-Lorraine government and the Reichstag _vis-à-vis_ the military, the whole German world fell upon the obstinate and hard-headed Alsatians who, according to them, were the cause of all the trouble because they refused to admire the beauty of the German _Kultur_. The Saverne affair resulted in the dismissal of the government of Alsace-Lorraine which had among its officials two won-over Alsatians, and the replacing this by a group of Prussians of rank. The Minister of War, General von Falkenhayn, announced to the Reichstag: "We want to uproot from the people's mind the feeling that has been manifested up to this time and which has provoked the Saverne incident." And this feeling is none other than the French democratic, republican spirit of the Alsatians, incompatible with Prussian militarism.