scorned by the Metz gentlemen, six of whom were brought to look at us before we were turned down. As a method of conducting business the proceedings did not strike us as efficient. The administrative problem of Alsace-Lorraine can only be a difficult one. French bureaucrats admittedly can be both corrupt and unwise, and it is on the enduring qualities of the French spirit that France must draw if she is to make a success of the government of her restored provinces. A true pacification of the German elements resulting in a general loyalty to France would be a signal victory for French statesmanship. The question of the compensating advantages presented by Alsace-Lorraine as against the devastations in Northern France, raises an issue about which French opinion is peculiarly sensitive. On this delicate ground any English writer is bound to tread warily. France will never admit, or permit it to be said, that any element of compensation enters into the case. The provinces were stolen from her; now they have been restored at the cost of over a million French lives and untold sufferings. From the point of view of abstract justice and ideal right this contention is doubtless true. But it breaks down before the humdrum questions presented by population, trade, revenue. The provinces were irretrievably lost to France and could only be regained at the price of a successful war. It must be a considerable satisfaction to any friend of France to feel that the crater holes of the devastated areas are at least set off by the recovery of two rich and prosperous provinces, 5605 square miles in extent, with a population of 1,874,014 people. The case of France otherwise would have been aggravated to a desperate degree. She at least enters here and now into possession of an undevastated area, bringing with it considerable compensations in population, minerals, agriculture, and all that these imply as regards trade and taxation. The provinces return vastly improved in their material equipment, thanks to the German capital spent on them. The asset restored is far richer than the asset lost. The set-off, of course, is in no sense equal to what has been destroyed, but it is a substantial element in the case, and one to which, frankly, too little attention is ever paid when questions of war losses are discussed. It is an interesting experience to motor through the Vosges at a point where the line, so fiercely contended in the north, peters out, so to speak, under conditions which by contrast seem mild if not actually ladylike. We motored to St. Dié by way of the Odilienberg and Saales, returning over the Col de Schlücht to Münster and Colmar, and so back to Strasbourg. Our chauffeur, an Alsatian, warned us we must expect terrible scenes on reaching Saales: since 1870 the French frontier. The warning proved how little experience he had had of the grim business of war on the main lines of attack and defence.