The Alsaces-Lorraines have always had great independence of character; they are thoroughly democratic and republican, for which reason they so quickly and solidly became a part of the French nation, which, even under different forms of monarchical government, respected their liberty and democratic ideals. The political history of Alsace-Lorraine furnishes a new proof of this fact on every page. Lorraine became a part of France at the Convention of Friedwald in Hessen, January 14, 1552, when the German Protestant princes at war with the Catholic House of Austria, gave Metz, Toul, and Verdun to the King of France, Henry II., in exchange for subsidies furnished by France. In the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, Alsace was ceded to France in exchange for services which the King gave to the German Protestant princes fighting against the Catholic Empire. Alsace was conquered for France by the German Prince, Bernard de Saxe-Weimar, on the demand and in the interest of Germany which had called upon France for help. Strasbourg, which had remained a free independent city, opened her gates to France in 1681. The Republic of Mulhouse, which made a part of Helvetia, asked, and obtained the request, to be incorporated into France in 1798. Neither Alsace nor Lorraine ever made part of the German Empire founded in 1871, and to which vanquished France was obliged to give up these territories. When these two provinces came into the possession of France, they were bound by rather loose ties to the Holy Roman Empire, of which the House of Austria was at the head. The Austria-Hungary Empire did not survive the Napoleonic wars, and I do not know that it ever claimed any part of Alsace-Lorraine. On the contrary, in order to found the German Empire and appropriate Alsace-Lorraine, Prussia had to make war on Austria in 1866 to put her out of Germany. The German Empire is wrong, therefore, in making an appeal to anything but _force_ to explain, if not to justify the spoliation of France. Alsace-Lorraine was never a political entity before 1871. We have seen that Alsace was still a part of the Holy Roman Empire, while Lorraine had already belonged to France for a hundred years.