The agricultural value of the great plain of Alsace must be considerable. The land is rich and well cultivated. Corn, potatoes, and beetroot flourish. Crops of maize and fields of tobacco point to the warmth of the climate. Hops and vines are grown on a scale which does not indicate much enthusiasm for the Pussyfoot movement. Hops are trained on rather a different principle from that usual in Kent, and the long trailing festoons of leaves and flowers languish one towards another like so many elegant and swooning beauties. Tobacco factories and breweries have been established in Strasbourg by the Germans; engine works and foundries also contribute to its wealth. But despite the commercial and manufacturing activities which have turned a city of 78,000 people in 1870 to one of 170,000 in 1911, the strength of Alsace remains rooted in its agriculture and its agricultural population. Except Strasbourg, and in a lesser degree Mülhausen, there are no big towns. From the land has come in the main the brave spirit which carried the people through years of gloom and foreign domination. That the same spirit will triumph over the difficulties of reconstruction must be the hope of all friends of France. CHAPTER XIII SOME ELECTIONEERING IMPRESSIONS I German political life is in the main a sealed book to the British public. Many people take but a tepid interest in the politics of their own country. To grapple with the intricacies of parties and programmes in a foreign land is an effort quite beyond the will or the power of the average citizen. Yet Germany plays, and is bound to play for years to come, so dominant a part in every calculation and forecast made by her neighbours, that it is of considerable importance to try and realise what forces are at work among her own people. Constitutional life in Germany has had many vicissitudes. When the tragic history of our own times comes to be written, future historians will probably regard the failure of the Frankfurt deputies in 1848 to solve the problem of German unity on a democratic basis as the most fatal date in modern history. The unity which the “Professors’ Parliament” failed to achieve was welded together triumphantly by Bismarck, twenty-three years later, through blood and iron. To the cult of blood and iron Germany henceforth dedicated itself, and for many years, with striking success. But even within the Empire the system had its challengers, as the spread of Socialist doctrines and the successes of the Social Democrats proved. When the military régime collapsed in defeat and confusion in the autumn of 1918, it was to the despised democratic elements that Germany owed her escape from utter ruin.