Let us remember on this subject, that very recently German names have been officially given to French localities in Lorraine. When the Germans wish to accomplish a master stroke of policy they are careful to quote the Herren Professoren in justification of the establishment of an historic precedent. Renan, in a mildly bantering spirit, complimented them on their extraordinary talent in these ridiculous attempts. "With the philosophy of history," says he, "as practised by the Germans, there are no legal rights in the world but those of the ourang-outangs, unjustly deprived of these by the perfidy of civilized man." In the main, it matters little to whom Alsace-Lorraine has belonged during the vicissitudes of history. That only which is important from the point of view of modern history is the act of 1871 by which Germany tore Alsace-Lorraine from France when all the inhabitants of the ceded territories were thoroughly French and wished so to remain. This is the truth, and it is confirmed by an authority little suspected by the Germans. Professor Theobald Ziegler, who up to the present moment was Professor of Science at the University of Strasbourg, and a liberal democrat, has changed to a pan-Germanist of the most pronounced type. Here is what the Herr Professor Ziegler acknowledges, writing in the review _Die Grenzboten_, March 31, 1915: "What makes a nation? Not the feeling of race nor the consciousness of belonging to the same stock which is often lost in the uncertainty and obscurity of history; not the soil, which may be transferred from one people to another as in the case of Alsace; not the language--one has only to think of Switzerland where three languages are spoken; not even interests in common, for these exist in every society, but just the living together of two centuries shared with the great nation of France has made Alsace-Lorraine French." But Ziegler and his friends have forgotten that to live together there must be mutual understanding and esteem. History teaches that no appreciable advantage is to be gained unless the peoples agree, or if one nation tries to impose its brutal domination over another. And yet it is just this which is the great obstacle that prevents Germany from assimilating Alsace-Lorraine and has condemned all its efforts to eternal failure. INCOMPATIBILITY OF DISPOSITION OF THE GERMANS AND THE INHABITANTS OF ALSACE-LORRAINE In his excellent volume, _The Peril of Prussianism_, Professor Douglas W. Johnson has traced, in a masterly fashion, the difference between the two ideals of government, one starting with the principle that the State is made to serve the people, the other, that the people are made to serve the State, a view personified by the Kaiser in Germany today.