I visited Strasbourg, now outwardly Frenchified, but inwardly German enough. At the time of the commencement of the armistice and the German retirement "Simplicimus" published a picture of a "Farewell to Strasbourg." It was a stormy sunset and late evening, and the black silhouette of the very memorable cathedral, the stark and ragged grandeur of that cathedral and its spire which looks as if nothing exists in Strasbourg but it, stood for the significance of the city. Some German horse-soldier symbolized the last to go, and lifting his hat, took one last look at the place, and said, "_Auf wiedersehen_." And Alsace became French once more. What a thing to graft two French provinces to the living body of Germany for fifty years and then dispart, when the blood has learned to flow strongly from the new flesh to the heart! You feel the break, the interruption, when you go there now. And now the same two provinces, heavily Germanized, are re-grafted back to the original flesh of France. It would be absurd to say that the circulation of the blood and the spirit have been re-established at once. There is a great deal of mortification in Alsace and Lorraine. It will be a long while before French life permeates the whole and surges through every vein. Meanwhile the new process of Frenchification proceeds. We seldom hear that the Germans dare claim to hold Alsace and Lorraine on any grounds, and yet, in fact, quietly and persistently, they do dare. It is frequently urged in conversation that if a plebiscite had been taken in the two provinces, the majority would have been found desirous of remaining under German rule. This, no doubt, is partly vanity, and springs from belief in the supposed preferability of German civilization to French civilization--even French people who knew what it was to live under a French as well as a German regime might prefer the latter as more efficient and comfortable and up-to-date. But the belief that a plebiscite would have gone in German favour is based even more on the German population and on the strong business interests which link the industrial part with the industrial whole. Alsace and Lorraine through commercial development had become an exceedingly important constituent of modern Germany before the war. Germany, moreover, claims to have converted them from poor departments of France to wealthy industrial communities. Naturally no one on the Allied side of the peace-table ever dreamed of considering such arguments. And they are so lacking in practical cogency that they find no place in the current consideration of modern Europe. They are useless arguments for a Germany who lost the war, and they are assumed to be quite dead. Germany has enough trouble to save Westphalia and Silesia and the Ruhr valley, let alone think about the irrecoverables of the war. She might as well argue that the fleet she sank at Scapa Flow should be restored to her as think of Alsace now.