final inscription below this figure, attached by handcuffs after the armistice, “Sic transit gloria mundi!” * * * * * For more than half a century the problem of Alsace-Lorraine has been debated back and forth with arguments which have had no effect on the opposite sides of the controversy. To Germans the Reichsland is a German country, save for the French-speaking strip along the western border. It was occupied by German tribes in the fifth century; its speech is German; it was a portion of the mediaeval Empire until violently torn away in the seventeenth century; in 1871 Germany was simply reclaiming her lost provinces. Furthermore, as stated in 1871, Metz and the Vosges were a necessary defence of the Fatherland against French aggression, which had been experienced under the two Napoleons and might be expected again. Finally, as stated now but not openly in 1871, the iron of Lorraine was absolutely necessary to the economic life of modern Germany. Germany held Alsace-Lorraine by right of nationality and by right of conquest, the symbol of her national unity achieved in the war by which it was recovered; it was a part of Germany, not an international question, and she would not give it up or discuss giving it up. To the French Alsace and Lorraine had become and remained fundamentally French, having been assimilated gradually and without violence in the eighteenth century, French most of all by having entered fully into the spirit of the French Revolution and taken an active part therein. They begged to remain a part of France in 1871, as the unanimous protests of their representatives show, and they continued French at heart against the strongest pressure in the opposite direction. In spite of differences of language, such as exist in other parts of France, Alsace and Lorraine were French in social structure, in political ideals, and in the sympathies of the population. Without these lost provinces France was a mutilated country, not fully France. Furthermore, the possession of Metz and the Vosges by a military power like Germany constituted a standing menace to a peaceful country like the French Republic; it also menaced the economic life of France and its defence by making possible, as in 1914, immediate seizure of the richest part of its iron supply. France was robbed of these provinces by force in 1871, and the wrong had to be righted, not only in the interest of France but for the sake of the inhabitants.