Buffalmaco wrote him: 'It would not be right for Your Eminence hereafter to employ an outsider to paint for you, since you already entertain such an excellent and finished artist in your own household.'

WITH flags, speeches and mass meetings, the second anniversary of the liberation of Alsace and Lorraine was celebrated throughout the reconquered lands last November. Two months later the writer spent some days in the historic provinces for which France and Germany have struggled for generations. One of the first comments he heard was this, from a French official:

"The Germans tried for forty-seven years to Germanise Alsace-Lorraine, and they failed. What the Germans could not accomplish in forty-seven years we French have done in two."

This mordant remark was, of course, an overstatement. Gallic wit could not resist a good epigram. But I found Alsace-Lorraine seething with grievances, and the mass of the people in a state of mind most disappointing to an outsider who had pictured the two provinces in war-time as groaning under German rule and waiting anxiously for liberating poilus. Probably the people did groan anxiously and long for the French. The curse of this borderland is that the French and German temperaments mix like oil and water, and yet your average inhabitant has a good deal of both in his blood.

It is not easy to get at the German view-point in Alsace or Lorraine. The German element lives under terror of denunciation and deportation, and anti-French talk has been regarded by the French authorities as sufficient reason to give a man and family forty-eight hours to leave the country, with permission to take not more than fifty pounds of hand baggage. Thanks, however, to introductions to leading residents obtained elsewhere, the writer found a certain number of malcontents who were willing, with precautions, to discuss their grievances.

The tables have indeed been turned; a few years ago it was the patriotic French irreconcilables who used to

pull down their blinds, bolt their in passionate whispers. doors, and sing "The Marseillaise"

Before the war, in a play called "Alsace," I heard the late Mme. Réjane as an Alsatian patriot bring a British audience to its feet by her portrayal of such a scene, ending with the great French song chanted below the breath so no lurking German might hear. Last week, in Strasburg, I was present in an Alsatian home when the same scene was enacted.

This time the song was 'Die Wacht am Rhein.'

The ordinary, plain bourgeois folk who sang it were risking ruin, deportat on with the loss of all their property if they were caught. Mme. Réjane was a great dramatic artist; but the genuine passion and hatred of those Germans flowed into the words of their hymn, and one woman especially seemed as impressive in her "part" as the French actress had been.

Such is the irony of history; the German population lives now, as the French lived for forty-seven years, waiting for the "day of deliverance," believing that it will dawn, if not upon them, upon their children. But the "German" populat on, like the "French," is a minority. The bulk of the people are neither fanatically ⚫ German nor French; they grumble against France now as they used to grumble against Prussia, and would again if the Germans came back.

The atmosphere in Alsace-Lorraine is not one which favours the collection of facts upon the actual economic or political condition of the country. To collect such facts was my mission. I found nineteen persons out of twenty either afraid to talk at all, if on the one side, or, if French, inclined to deny or refuse to discuss some of the unpleasant features evident to a casual but unprejudiced eye.

After a prolonged effort to sift the kernels of truth out of masses of lies and evasions, it is possible to present = a summary of the actual grievances

of the German element, of the complaints of the mass of the people who are not violently pro-German, and of the French answers to these things, and the reasons the French give why things are not better.

Immediately after the French oc

cupation in 1918 deportations of German residents commenced. Men who had lived with their families for thirty or forty years in the same house were cleared out on forty-eight hours' notice, allowed to take fifty pounds of hand luggage, compelled to sacrifice all their property or to sell it in a few hours for next to nothing.

The most conservative figures indicate that more than 75,000 persons have been sent across the Rhine since the armistice. These deportations the Germans contrast with their own behaviour when they annexed AlsaceLorraine in 1871. The inhabitants were given nearly eighteen months in which to decide whether they would be German or French, and it was not unt 1 September 30, 1872, that the 45,000 persons who refused to live under Prussian rule as Germans were sent across the frontier into France.

German residents claim that by dismissing all the German-trained officials and installing French officials, often brought in from outside, who frequently do not know German, the Paris Government has thrown the internal administration into a hopeless muddle. Considering that 85 per cent. of the people before the war spoke German as their mother tongue, the outlawing of the German language in the civil service and the courts is pronounced unfair.

In the schools, from which all teachers other than those who belonged to the French party before the war have been dismissed, a constant struggle of rival propagandas is in progress. Since the Germans did not allow teachers of known French sympathies, most of the present instructors are natives without experience, or teachers brought from outside.

There exists a constant "sabotage"

"disaffected element" should be benefited.

in the schools of which German Catholics make much, but in which

they appear to have won a partial victory. Out of a population of 1,449,000 in Alsace-Lorraine, 1,310,000 are Catholics, and their children have always received religious instruction. from the State. This issue cuts across the German-French quarrel; almost all the people are Catholics. Accordingly, when the French Government in 1918 and 1919 attempted to apply

to Alsace and Lorraine the rules obtaining in French schoo s against religious teaching, they met with a storm of opposition not only from the German element but from the French, and have partially given way..

Some religious instruction is permitted. French Catholics profess themselves satisfied; German Catholics make constant complaints against restrictions and the "impious" and "atheistical" tendencies of the education authorities.

"There is no justice; there is one law for the French, another for ourselves," was a complaint I heard many times. An example is the alleged fact, told me by several Germans, that when the French Government at great cost to the Treasury agreed to transfer bank balances of the inhabitants from marks into francs, it took care to see that none of the

At the time this was done a franc was worth from two to three marks. But unless, in the opinion of the French officials of the district, a man was politically sound," his balance remains in marks; if indeed he can get at it at all. I repeat this charge under reserve; I do not intend in this story to retail all the charges

them are palpably false, but this one came from many sides, and I got no satisfactory explanation in French quarters.

The health and sanitary conditions of the country are declining rapidly under French rule, German sympathisers declare. The former inspectors and Boards of Health have been dismissed, most of them sent across the Rhine. Their places are unfilled, or filled by incompetents. As a result, diseases which before the war were rife in French villages just across the border, but had been unknown for a generation in Alsace and Lorraine, are creeping back. The German Army used to compile statistics relating to the physical condition of each batch of recruits obtained from the smallest locality; if the figures showed results below normal, army medical experts were at once despatched to find out what was wrong and put things right. Such measures are taken no longer.

The economic grievance is the one of which the Germans in Lorraine make most. In the iron, coal and salt mines the workers remain, but nearly all the foremen and managers were Germans, and have either lost their jobs or been deported. French technical experts were brought in, who, whatever their qualifications elsewhere, did not know these mines. The

outgoing Germans told them as little as possible.

In any case, an orgy of inefficiency in management is said to have resulted, and still continues. What the Germans lay to French inefficiency the French retort is due to German sabotage. Output is half or less than half that under German rule, and those of the miners who are Germans heartily despise their new French bosses. Much the same condition of affairs prevails in the coal mines of the Saar plebiscite area.

I went to the French authorities in Strasburg and Colmar in Alsace and in Metz in Lorraine, and asked for French views as to the progress of the provinces.

"Give us time!" is the burden of the French answer to all complaints and criticisms. They point out, and justly, that in all countries Governments are blamed for unavoidable post war conditions. A French manager of a Lorraine coal mine, a moderate and well-informed man, said:

"Everywhere in the world people denounce their rulers because things were not as they were. But here, consider what a chance to vent their spleen the people have! Instead of blaming the party in power, they can blame the country in power. Of course, things are not a they were before the war, or even during the war, when Alsace-Lorraine was the spoiled darling of Germany, kept stocked with food and petted in every

way.

"So the people say to each hardship: 'It is those damned French! If we only had the Germans back they I would do so-and-so, as they did in the old days!' Of course we are much better off than we could be under the Germany of the present time, but the people do not know that."

The grievances of the people at the price of food and goods are laid by the German element, and by many of the ignorant classes who have no politics, at the door of the French. The poor especially The poor especially grumble and contrast prices now in francs with what they used to be in marks. Germany profits by such comparisons. But a French Town Councillor in Colmar said, probably justly, that the Paris authorities in a desire to stifle discontent have treated Alsace and Lorraine in the matter of food even better than the rest of France; while he pointed out that France has shown her desire to conciliate her re-won provinces by making them a gift, at a cost of hundreds of millions of francs, of French money in exchange for German.

He shrugged his shoulders when asked whether the banks had paid francs for marks to German sympathisers. "It is the Germans who owe us money, not we who owe them," he said.

Complaints of the inefficiency of French administration as compared with German are either denied, or else the temporary confusion and a quiet sabotage on the part of German sympathisers are pleaded in palliation. That the French rule is inefficient, by comparison, appears indubitable. But there is fairness in the French request for time before they are too harshly judged.

Apparently by order, French officials will not discuss the deportations. In such quarters I found a tendency to admit that there had been too many deportations in the early days after the armistice. "Trop de zele,' said a leading French resident in Strassburg with a shrug.

The French case here is that all German officials in Alsace and Lorraine

were trained propagandists of the German Government, who if they were left undisturbed would constantly intrigue and plot. So they had to go. German commercial men would have planned to retain and spread German commercial influence. So they had to go. German professors in Strassburg University, and all German educators down to the teachers of country schools, would have continued to preach Kultur and poison the youthful mind. So they had to go.

But having said so much, several Frenchmen half apologetically explained that the deportations have practically stopped, and evidently hoped that as little as possible might be said about what has become an unpleasant subject.

A pathetic incident in a village in Lower Alsace will indicate how the economic life of the country was upset at bottom as well as at the top by the deportations. It is the wife of the landlord of a tiny hotel which boasts seven rooms who speaks:

"Schultz was a German and we are French. We never met socially. But Schultz kept the provision store on the corner and we traded there for thirty years. He was a German, but he was an honest man. The war came, and then Mrs. Schultz one morning came in here, crying. She had never been inside the door before except to carry goods. This time her two children were with her, and they were crying too.

"She told me Schultz had to leave in forty-eight hours. They had to go with him. Just because he was a German. He had to leave everything -the bank offered him only a fifth of what his shop is worth. I ask you, monsieur, was it right? And then in a week came a wretched scoundrel from over there (pointing to France).

He sells bad stuff, he gives bad weights, he charges twice, three times what Schultz charged. He is a thief, monsieur. Do you not think some day the laws will change and Schultz can come back to us again? It is his shop, monsieur. They stole it from him."

That woman is pro-French to the backbone. One of her sons crossed the frontier in 1914 and fought in the French army. She is still pro-French and does not want the Germans back. But she wants Schultz. Alsace and Lorraine were full of Schultzes.

There has been some small agitation in Strassburg and other towns by pro-French persons disgusted with the present régime, joining with proGermans who think Germany is now kaput, who want the Provinces of Alsace and Lorraine turned into an autonomous buffer State between France and Germany. Th's was seriously debated during the war when it seemed that the struggle might end in a draw, but the movement is not now taken seriously by the French authorities or any oue of either side with whom I talked.

The police do not even break up the meetings or take special measures to suppress the pamphlets of the "Independence" Party, but confine their energies to combating German propaganda. The "Independents,"

I was told, do not number more than a few thousands in the two provinces, not because many persons would not welcome such a solution, but because they realise its impracticability.

One of the most important economic grievances held by the liberated prov inces against the politicians in Paris has to do with the trade of the Rhine between Strassburg and Antwerp. These grievances are held by French and German factions alike. I was