Germany have combated with fury ever since the
French Revolution, and with increasing success.
Germany in 1914 was notoriously less liberal than
in 1848. The Rhine is a boundary in the realm of
ideas. It ought also to be a boundary in the political
map of Europe.

In December, 1913, the Prussian Secretary of
War, General von Falkenhayn, said, after speaking
of the attitude of the people of Zabern: "We want
to stamp out in the population the spirit that they
manifested and which called forth the incidents of
Zabern." Six months earlier Bethmann-Hollweg
had written to the historian Lamprecht: "We are
a young people. We have perhaps too much faith
in force. We take too little account of refined means.
We do not yet know that what force acquires, force
alone can keep."

Never has the manner of Germanization, as ap-
plied to Alsace-Lorraine, been better defined than
by Falkenhayn, nor more justly judged and con-
demned than by these words of the Chancellor.

Democratic Germany talks much but does not
act; autocratic Germany acts but does not talk,--
such is one of the lessons of the incident of Zabern.

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