famous meals in restaurants' at all, and that in the towns behind the armistice line you find them both abundant and cheap. In Valenciennes, after looking about me for the best part of an hour, I got something to eat at last in a peasant's shop, and there were with me, sitting at the same table, two French women of the people, a carter, and a man who had been driving a lorry. We had a perfectly uneatable mess of rice, and small scraps of I know not what sort of meat; a little dark, impossible bread and a scrap of cheese, and we everyone of us paid three francs for that accommodation, and thought ourselves lucky to get it. Anywhere in the Palatinate or Alsace, one could get an excellent meal for the same price, but not in Metz. And, what is more to the point, instead of having to look for it everywhere until you found one miserable hole in the wall, the eating-places east of the enemy lines were as numerous as in peace time. And this is talking of food only. In the matter of fuel there was no comparison. Coal is lavishly used everywhere in the Palatinate and in the Rhine valley and in Alsace, and all the consequences of such use in light and heat are apparent everywhere. This contrast shows itself, as I have said, externally in the great difference of life and happiness and movement between the battle zone and what lies east of it. Nowhere did I find that contrast more striking than between the two towns which have been linked in the mind of educated Europe for fifty years, Metz and Strassburg. Metz is distinctly a town in the battle zone. It is not nearly as badly off as Valenciennes but it is indefinitely more badly off than Strassburg. I think that anyone who has had such a personal experience as I have would, in speaking about this question of supply, be compelled to clear his mind. If, for some political reason, you desire If anyone connected with the pro- Strassburg, then, like all towns behind the battle zone, I found thoroughly alive, full of movement, and the streets and shops overflowing. It was a big, bustling European town in which war could be half-forgotten, and the difference between it and Metz was the difference between life and death. We must remember, in this connection, that the whole of Western Germany and Alsace, and most of Lorraine is ignorant of the physical effect of war upon its own soil, save for occasional air-raids; and even this exception did not affect Strassburg. This absence of the physical effect of war has, I think, a profound effect upon the mind. I do not know what the attitude of the average Englishman would be toward the war if three English counties, let us say, had been completely devastated, their people massacred or enslaved, their public monuments destroyed, and most of their villages wiped out. The moral reactions of this sort of thing are incalculable. But I am certain that if this had happened the whole attitude of the people would be utterly different. So with the Palatinate and Alsace and much of Lorraine behind the battle line. You feel that you have here a population which has known war through an appalling death-list, through privation, and through the constant peril of change, but not through invasion and devastation. And I am confident that those two last factors make all the difference. They will affect the mind of Europe for a generation, and nothing will lead to more misunderstanding or perhaps to a stronger policy upon the part of those who have suffered as contrasted with those who have not. For a town whose language is German, and whose traditions and most of whose architecture are of the old German sort, Strassburg has got more French in the last twenty-odd years since I had last seen it. This was probably due to a reaction. But one heard French in the streets, though spoken with that very strong German accent which marks the Alsatian, and there seemed to be more French cooking about and French habits generally. All this question of the fundamental German character of Alsatian civilization and its curious connection with a strong French patriotism is exceedingly difficult to put clearly. It has been muddled by I know not what 'scientific' arguments about the shapes of heads, place names, folk-lore, and all the rest of the hypothetical nonsense. The plain facts are simple enough, and the real difficulty of putting them rightly is that we have no parallel to them in this country. What happened in the case of Alsace was this: years between from the older to the Then came that great change in public thought which produced sharp boundaries and highly centralized, highly defined States. It was like the baking of clay in an oven. What had been soft and indefined became hard and rigid, and all during that process Alsace happened to be attached to the French group. It became in feeling as French as Wales is British. Historical arguments which neglect During the two hundred and fifty this glaring present and modern truth have that particular vice of pedantry which makes them the worst form of falsehood. There are people in this country who draw a line between what they call Celtic and what they call Teutonic in the British Islands, and then puzzle themselves over the question of Home Rule, and wonder why Kerry thinks differently from Cardiff. These people are about as practical as the people who think of Alsace as an integral part of the modern German State. It is nothing of the kind. Its tradition and meaning, its way of looking at itself, is French, and not German. The line of cleavage does not lie between Alsace and Frenchspeaking Lorraine, or between Germanspeaking Lorraine and French-speaking Lorraine. It lies upon the Upper Rhine. But to this there must be added two other disturbing factors. During the last generation Alsace and Lorraine, including the French-speaking part which was annexed, and especially the town of Metz, as we have seen, was filled largely artificially, but in part also by the natural play of a common political arrangement, with immigrants from the East, while, at the same time, a certain proportion of the original inhabitants emigrated. You had here a phenomenon comparable to that of Ireland, spread over a much shorter period of time, but more intense in effect. Secondly, the great industrial development of the new Prussian Empire erected in 1871 powerfully affected the annexed territory, and especially Alsace. The population of Strassburg doubled, and the town became attached by a hundred economic links with the new development of the Rhine Valley lower down. Both these effects will remain under the new state of affairs, and will add to the complexity of the problem. The effects of the first will disappear earliest, for there was a great floating mass of opinion, as there always is, which accepted alien rule, but now that it is free is glad to show distaste for it. I say again that the explanation was probably a reaction. Strassburg had far more opportunities of standing out than had Metz. It thoroughly understood its conquerors and it disliked them with a dislike peculiar to those who understand. Metz was simply bewildered. When, therefore, Strassburg began to enjoy a somewhat more liberal régime about half way through the annexed generationStrassburg was able to react. It is particularly noticeable that the old German architecture of the town and the contrasting French eighteenthcentury work of which there is a little -the noblest example being Rohan's Archiepiscopal Palace have been far less plastered over with the startling modern Prussian stuff than has Metz. Indeed, these excrescences are hardly noticeable. I saw one big shop in the High Street which might have come out of Berlin and here and there a modern archway in the sham cyclopean style which reaches its nadir in the Leipzig monument. But no general effect upon the town was apparent. Externally Strassburg in spite of its growth has remained the same and morally, I say, shows this slight but appreciable reaction toward French habits, which has been going on for the last twentyodd years. The large influx of French officials and garrison affects the town curiously little, whether in appearance or habit. They seem to fit in well enough and there is an end of it. The cathedral, so far as I could judge in so short a visit, was untouched and unspoiled altogether. I fancy it would be regarded by its late masters as a special monument, and I am certain that the strict and jealous local autonomy of Strassburg would have done everything to protect it against defacement such as Metz has suffered. It will be interesting to see what the French do with the University; whether they will leave it in its partially restored condition (excluding, of course, the 'planted' element) or whether they will bring it into line with the general French system. I think though I have very few elements on which to judge that they will be wise to change it as little as possible. The Alsatian has always been intensely attached to his province, which he rightly regards as a little nation, and the more that feeling is respected the better. It is a problem attached to the larger religious problem, which will also have to be faced and which it will certainly be wise to solve upon the same lines. For the religion of the province is mixed. A Catholic majority, of course, a large Protestant minority- nearly one third if I remember right without books of reference at my elbow and a considerable Jewish body; the Protestants counting more than their numerical weight on account of their industrial position. But the recent development of the French division upon religion has not touched Alsace; neither the attack upon the Church schools and organization, nor the reaction against that attack. Strassburg has also a great strength like most other Alsatian towns in the share it has taken of the increased wealth of the German Empire during the period of annexation. Had the war come to a conclusion which left a strong united Prussia standing and with power to make the navigation of the Rhine difficult for the French and to impede access from Alsace to the industries upon the left bank of that river further down, there might have been here a further difficult prob Land and Water lem to solve. Luckily the future does not seem to threaten any power of that sort, upon the part of whatever political grouping the right bank assumes, to cut off Alsace from the modern industry in which it has shared. It is far too early as yet to discover even the beginnings of the change in communications. Between Lower Alsace and the rest of France there intervenes the terrible waste of the battle zone, with its starvation and ruin; and all traffic to and fro, including the supply of the garrisons and the passage of troops passes through the bottle neck of Saverne. Communications are thus still very difficult, and the train service to Paris is a thing of much more than twelve hours. One thing should be certain, and that is the piercing of the Vosges at other points and the end of what has been for forty years an artificial isolation of Alsace from the West. During the generation of foreign rule the Alien Government of the province kept its Vosges boundary as impassable as possible. The few roads across the crest threading the great woods were jealously guarded. An extraordinarily strict system of passports imposed by the German Government made travel as difficult as could be, and of through railway development there was none: none was allowed. Everything had to come through the two prison gates of Avricourt and Belfort. But new railways are now bound to come. things now are there is no line between the tunnel of Saverne and the Gap of Belfort, a distance of some sixty miles. The communications of Alsace westward were fossilized, as it were, under the state in which the war of 1870 found them. They cannot permanently remain in that condition. As ABOARD THE GERMAN FLEET IN SCAPA FLOW THE German fleet is anchored in the great roadstead protected by the Islands Hoy, Cava, and Mainland. The torpedo boats are somewhat closer in shore than the larger vessels and in a more protected situation. For the most part they are moored together so that a person can pass from one boat to the other. The crew of several boats always live in one boat and go out every day to their posts on the socalled cold boats in order to perform the necessary duties for keeping them in condition. Although the place Although the place where the ships are affords a safe anchorage it is, nevertheless, necessary, on account of the sudden and violent storms occasional, to take measures of precaution, such as casting out an extra anchor or starting the fires so as to be able in case of necessity to put the ships in motion against the storm. The islands, which are visible from the vessels with the naked eye or with the glass, have a bald and barren look. There are no trees or thickets. The banks are very bare or at places covered with grass, where cattle and sheep pasture. Where the land is more fertile one sees signs of careful cultivation and the fields are beautifully green. It is not very cold, in spite of the northern latitude, because the Gulf Stream strikes these coasts and maintains a nearly equal temperature. Snow seldom falls at any season, except that a thin coverlid occasionally caps the summit of Ward Hill. The crews of the ships are reduced to a number that is merely sufficient to perform the most necessary duties. The larger ships, including officers and under-officers, have about one hundred and twenty-five men. The smaller cruisers have eighty to ninety men. Naturally the engineering branch is most numerously represented among those who remain. They are kept very busy. Not only do they have to provide for heating and lighting the ships, but they are obliged also to keep the machinery in such shape that the vessels may, in case of need, make the return voyage under their own steam. We have to take into account that the ships' machinery has been under a heavy strain during the last years of the war. The torpedo boats were kept under steam in all weather, while the large vessels were constantly on guard duty in order to protect the mine sweepers from enemy attacks. Under such constant employment the vessels naturally could not go into dry dock for necessary repairs. Consequently, both the engines and the boilers are in very bad shape. The condenser tubes leak and let salt water into the boilers. The result is that the kettles begin to foam and the water goes into the turbines, which immediately stop. It results that some ships lose more water in a week than their condensers will supply. This is very bad, because the English are not able to supply fresh water to the vessels except in rare instances. For the most part the latter have to rely entirely upon their own distilling apparatus. Therefore, a great shortage of fresh water exists in the fleet. Every drop of rain water is carefully collected for washing purposes. The vessels are getting enough coal from the English and it is delivered in good condition. Once a week an English collier comes alongside and we coal up. The shortage of men is such that this is a hard task and lasts |