In normal times the composers of speeches from the throne are accustomed to describe the relations between their own and foreign countries as "friendly." When the relations are not friendly, yet not the opposite, they are usually registered on the political barometer as "correct." The attitude on both sides is formal, rigorously polite, reserved; such as would become a pair of people who had once been at feud and after their quarrel had been fought out agreed, if only for the sake of appearances, to show no outward animosity, but on the other hand not give an inch of way. The position of France and Germany is "correct"; it has never been friendly since 1870; and it must be many a long year before it can be friendly again. Apart from the difference between the Latin and Teutonic temperaments, apart from the legacy of hate left in Germany against France by the sufferings and humiliations the great Napoleon caused her, apart from the fact that one people is republican and the other monarchical, there is always one thing that will prevent reconciliation--the loss by France of the fair provinces Alsace and Lorraine. It is of no use for Germany to remind France that up to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 this territory belonged to Germany, or rather to what then was known by that name. It was useless as well as ungracious for Bismarck to tell France to seek compensation in Africa for what she had lost in Europe. Like Rachel mourning for her children, France will not be comforted; and now, as from the heavy hour in which she lost the provinces, she grieves over the memory of them and nurses the hope, still mingled with hate, of one glorious day regaining them. There are sanguine spirits who assert that the old feeling is dying out, and the German Government studiously encourages that view. It may be so; time is having its obliterating effects; and in externals at least the Germanization of the provinces is slowly making progress. Still the wound is deep, and there seems no prospect of its healing. Several suggestions have been made with a view to an arrangement that might leave France without reason, or with less reason, for constant meditation on revenge One of them is the neutralization of Alsace-Lorraine on the model of Belgium, while another is the distribution of the territory, so that while Alsace is divided between Baden and Bavaria, Lorraine becomes a part of Prussia A third would divide the provinces between the two nations. An illustration of the yet prevailing feeling is found in the fact that large Alsatian firms invariably use French in their correspondence with Berlin firms, and almost as invariably refer to the "customs-arrangement" with Germany in 1871. They cannot bring themselves to use the word "annexation."