ALSACE and Lorraine, those familiar names, found almost every day in almost every paper; those two oblong strips of country between France and Germany how little some of us know about them, after all! The ex-crown prince, in order to prove the ignorance of our fighting men, reported an American prisoner as saying that Alsace was a large lake. Perhaps he did, this soldier of ours-and perhaps there was a twinkle in his eye and a laugh in his heart when he said it; for our boys packed a lot of humor in their kits.

When we come down to it, however, we Americans—yes, and our English, even our French brothers-might well have known more of these two "lost provinces." We had the chance. But in our crowded lives many books are left unread; and so it is that those Alsatian stories, translated from the French of two authors who wrote under their combined names of ErckmannChatrian, were little known except to college students. Even then, the prophecy which these books contain went unheeded -a warning so plain, so certain, so convincing, that as we read it now in the light of what Germany has done these last four years, we wonder it was not trumpeted to us in every street. In their book "The Plebiscite," Erckmann-Chatrian gave us not only the tragic story of what happened to Alsace and Lorraine in 1870 and 1871, but warnings of the German designs on the rest of the world. Before most of us dreamed of this present awful war, they told the story of fortyeight years ago, and in the telling pointed a certain finger to the future. Only a year after the Franco-Prussian War ended, after picturing freshly remembered German brutalities, they said: "Those who shall come after will see worse things than this; since men are wolves, foxes, hawks, owls, all this must come round again.... These Germans are the most perfect spies

in the world; they come into the world to spy, as birds do to thieve: it is part of their nature. Let the Americans and all the people who are kind enough to receive them think of this. Their imprudence may some day cost them dearly. I am not inventing. I am not saying a word too much. We are an example. Let the world profit by it." That was our warning almost half a century ago.

And so, since the story of Alsace and Lorraine holds so much of revelation, let us know it better, though the knowledge comes too late to save the world from four terrible years of war.

We do not want to spend too much time on the early and confusing history of these disputed provinces, generally spoken of as "Alsace-Lorraine." It is enough to say that their history goes back years before Julius Caesar, and that, largely on the ground of natural boundary, France and Germany have both claimed them for centuries. A glance at Alsace shows it lying between the Vosges Mountains and France on the west and the river Rhine and Germany on the east. The claim of France has been that a river is a more definite boundary than a mountain-chain, and hence Alsace is hers; the claim of Germany, that the Rhine is a German river and not a boundary, and that Germany extends west to the Vosges Mountains. But if we look into the hearts of the people, we find they want to be French and, furthermore, that they lived contentedly under France for two hundred years preceding that unhappy 1871 when conquering Germany drove the hard bargain that compelled their surrender by France. "The will of the governed" was absolutely ignored. And though, since 1871, the marvelously systematic German Government has taken every step to strengthen its claims and its power over these bartered peoples, it has won from them neither

affection nor allegiance. As recently as last September the papers reported that so many Alastians had deserted from the German army, in which they had been forced to fight, that the soldiers from the province were ordered to the interior of Germany, and were on no account to be trusted in the front battle-line.

Fourteen years before the Franco-Prussian War, the king of Würtemberg, (a state that entered the German Empire in 1871) wrote to Bismarck, "Strasburg is necessary to us." To win Strasburg, the capital of Alsace, meant, of course, to win the whole province. Four years later, Europe was flooded with books asserting the old claim of Germany to Alsace-Lorraine. The actual war, for which Germany was not yet ready, did not come for ten years. But when it broke, it was a "lightning campaign," lasting only eight months.

The coming of the Prussians almost half a century ago was a forecast of their coming in 1914. They made at least two visits: one in 1867, in friendly guise, but as spies; the other in 1870, puffed with martial power, as would-be conquerors. On their first visit, even while they praised the grape clusters weighing down the vines and the autumn hills all russet in the sun, even while they kissed the sweet Alsatian children, their covetous eyes went everywhere. In secret they made maps, locating springs, roads, and fords, and lists of how much wheat, oats, and wine, how many horses and oxen, could be requisitioned in each village. They wanted more land in which to spread out. They wanted Lorraine with its salt-, coal-, and iron-mines. They wanted Alsace with its streams, rich farm-lands, and forest trees groomed like horses. And what easier way to get what you want than to take it? So reasoned the German mind.

Old ..en still remember the feverish activity of their little world in fear of the on-coming Prussians. Under cover of the night, the miller drained off the ditch below the mill-dam, stealthily sank an iron box filled with coins, covered it with rud, and then turned on the mill-stream to roar

on its way above his secret. On all sides leaped the whispers: "Hide everything you have! In a few days the enemy will be in Alsace!" "Where are Marie's ear-rings and Jeanette's locket?" "Did you bring the basket of livres from the cupboard?"

The peasants, clattering about in their wooden shoes, drove sheep, cattle, and pigs into the woods. Frightened hens scuttled along through dead leaves. While women watched from the hilltops, men staggered into the forest laden with canvas bags, spades, and pickaxes. And, then, one awful day, down the road came the cry: "Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons!"

What arms had peaceful Alsatians with which to face the cruel enemy? Besides their dauntless hearts, the unready farmers had only hoes and pitchforks. Against them marched an armed foe with fifty years of preparation. The brain-stunning news swept on that the Germans had put "more than a million men into the field in fifteen days."

When the Germans took possession, it was to declare that Alsace had always been a German province; that France, which had been her loving mother for the last two hundred years, had robbed Germany of her rights, and that the king of Prussia was merely taking his own.

Meantime, the German soldiers stole whatever they chose. The mayors of the villages of Alsace-Lorraine had to post requisition lists on the doors of the churches and of their offices. It was for the unhappy people to give what the Germans demanded or to see their houses burned to the ground. Too well the inhabitants knew what that meant. They knew that their conquerors would pile the furniture from their houses into the street, with straw above and below, start a blaze, set the houses on fire, and then stand by and laugh till what had once been a marketplace was one suffocating, roaring flame, what had once been home was ashes.

And so the mole-catcher gave his goats, the priest his ox, the miller watched the round backs of his five pigs go huddling down the road at the point of a Prussian

bayonet, and the forest guard, with a "Poor Bellotte! Poor Blanchette! I shall never see you again!" saw his two cows dragged off by the horns. "Think of the worth of a cow to a peasant!" he sighed; "with a cow in the stable, one has butter, milk, cheese, all the necessaries of life; to possess a cow is to be in easy circumstances; two are almost wealth." So we read in Erckmann-Chatrain.

Before long the disputed provinces

While they talked, they crammed food into their mouths. More than this, what they could not devour on the spot, they carried off: turnips, cabbages, loaves of fresh-baked bread, fine old hams. One man tramped off with strings of dried onions hanging out of his pockets; another

swarmed with Germans. Where they had not brought fire and ruin, they brought their greedy selves. Having ruthlessly cut down thriving orchards planted forty years before, they stretched themselves in grandmothers' chairs before fires built of fresh-killed apple- and pear-trees. Over long porcelain pipes filled with French tobacco, their yellow mustaches curled triumphantly; and over wine pressed from French grapes, they drank to the "Vaterland" and sang "Die Wacht am Rhein."

"Is that onion soup almost done!" stooping over a steaming pot and sniffing mightily. "What fine pink potatoes you raise on these mountains! My children would love this clotted cream!"

snatched a candle from a candlestick and rammed it into his boot.

Those tender, home-loving Germans! Their insolence was galling. Meantime, with the fall of each important city, the poor provincials realized more and more that this seizure was lasting, this homegrabbing permanent. At last that mighty stronghold, Strasburg, yielded. A month later, on October 27, Metz, the capital of Lorraine, that wonderfully fortified city, was surrounded and taken, and with it Bazaine's army of 173,000 Frenchmen.

Then the fall of Paris ended all! What booty should the robbers claim? Of course the two disputed provinces. To save France, Alsace and part of Lorraine

were ceded to Germany. But in the years that followed, the statue of Strasburg in the Place de la Concorde, in Paris, was always draped in black, and hung with wreaths of flowers.

Though, in all these years, the lost provinces have never been reconciled to the bargain made in the Treaty of Frankfort, they have never blamed France for making it. They saw that she had to make it to save her own life. "After the capitulation of Paris, the sacrifice of an arm was needful to save the body."

Previous to any negotiations for peace, however, two weeks before the Treaty of Bordeaux and three months before the Treaty of Frankfort, the deputies representing Alsace and Lorraine declared to the National Assembly, "in the clearest and most emphatic language, their will and their right to remain Frenchmen."

"In taking leave of this chamber, in which it would be a lowering of our dignity to sit longer, and in spite of the bitterness of our sorrow, our last impulse is one of gratitude for, the men who for six months have never ceased to defend us; and we are filled with a deep and unalterable love for our mother-country, from which we are violently torn.

"We will ever follow you with our prayers; and with unshaken confidence we await the future day when regenerated France shall resume the course of her high destiny.

"Your brothers of Alsace and Lorraine, separated at this moment from the common family, away from their home, will ever cherish a filial affection for their beloved France, until the day when she shall come to reclaim her place among us."

This was their farewell. When they were asked if they knew any other way of saving France, they said nothing. There was no other way!

But from that day they have lived on in the hope and faith that they would be restored to the Motherland, sustaining themselves through all their sufferings by steadily repeating the words: "Stand fast! The day will come!"

The German captors allowed the provincials fifteen months in which to decide between leaving Alsace and Lorraine altogether, or remaining there as subjects of the German empire. Each man thought out his own answer. Some chose to stay, in order to keep alive in the lost provinces, even while they showed outward obedience to Germany, the spirit of fidelity to France. Others, with a "No, I will not enter the service of the king of Prussia!" decided to leave. The few who, either for business or politics, actually became Germanized, hardly deserve mention. Their old neighbors shut them forever from their hearts with one scornful thought: "He has sold his conscience to the Prussians for a piece of black bread."

When the books tell us that within fifteen months 60,000 people, mainly peasants, left Alsace and Lorraine for France, into these cold numbers we read indignation, sacrifice, and loyalty, and in them we see moving masses of young men and women, old men and children, resolutely turning their backs on home and fireside. orchards and vineyards, barns and hayfields, and their faces toward the snowcapped Vosges.

Many a young man, his bundle hanging from a stick over his shoulder, set out alone, except for his faithful dog. But he was not allowed to feel alone, for from the doorways, as he plodded on, women with babies in their arms or with children peeping from behind their skirts called out, "God guide you!" Many a sick grandmother was carried on her bed to the cart where tables and chairs, frying-pans and frightened children, were crowded together for the unknown journey. They left in small companies: in autumn, when the dark firs of the Vosges were splashed with the yellow of neighbor beeches; in winter, through blinding, stinging snow; in spring, when singing birds among white blossoms tugged hardest on the love of home.

It was better so. Droves of Germans, in covered wagons like prairie-schooners, soon bore down on the captive land.

"What rich meadows!" they exclaimed.