(1) The population of the two provinces of Alsace and Lorraine is mainly German by race and language, but none the less it had become by 1870 almost entirely French in feeling, as the result of its long union with France. The Germans, in reannexing the provinces after the war, were actuated almost equally by reasons of sentiment and strategy. They welcomed the recovery of a section of their race which had been wrested from them by the brutal aggression of Louis XIV. and the dynastic policy of his successor; they also desired to secure their western frontier against the possible attacks of France, which, under the Third Empire, was still most emphatically an aggressive power. In drawing the new frontier they included for purely strategic reasons a small portion of western Lorraine, round the fortress of Metz, which was admittedly as French as Champagne or Picardy. From 1871 till 1911, Alsace-Lorraine was governed as a direct appanage of the Imperial Crown; in the latter year it received a constitution, but nothing even remotely resembling self-government. Contrary to the expectation of most Germans, the two provinces have not become German in sentiment; indeed the unconciliatory methods of Prussia have steadily increased their estrangement, despite their share in the commercial prosperity of the Empire. Those who know intimately the undercurrents of feeling in Alsace-Lorraine are unanimous in asserting that if before last July an impartial plebiscite, without fear of the consequences, could have been taken among the inhabitants, an overwhelming majority would have voted for reunion with France. But having once been the battleground of the two nations and living in permanent dread of a repetition of the tragedy, the leaders of political thought in Alsace and Lorraine favoured a less drastic solution. They knew that Germany would not relinquish her hold nor France renounce her aspirations without another armed struggle; but they believed that the grant of real autonomy within the Empire, such as would place them on an equal footing with Würtemberg or Baden, would render their position tolerable, and by removing the chief source of friction between France and Germany, create the groundwork for more cordial and lasting relations between Germany and the two Western Powers.[1] Now that the nightmare of war has once more fallen upon them, the situation has radically changed, and there can be no question that in the event of a French victory the provinces would elect to return to France. The fact that several of their leading politicians have fled to France and identified themselves with the French cause, is symptomatic, though doubtless not conclusive. That the government of the Republic, if victorious, will make the retrocession of Alsace-Lorraine its prime condition of peace, is as certain as anything can be certain in the seething pot to which triumphant militarism has reduced unhappy Europe. It may, then, seem merely pedantic to refer to an