Is Alsace German or French? - Part 7

Sir, you are an eminent historian.  But when we speak of the present, do not fix your eyes too much upon history.  Race is history; it is of the past.  Language too, is history; it is the remains and the sign of the remote past.  What is current and alive are wills, ideas, interests, and affections.  History perhaps tells you that Alsace is a German country, but the present proves that she is a French one.  It would be futile to maintain that she must return to Germany because she was once a part of it centuries ago.  Are we to reestablish everything as it was centuries ago?  And then, I beg you to consider to which Europe we must refer; that of the seventeenth century, or that of the fifteenth, or even that of ancient Gaul that possessed the whole Rhine and where Strasbourg, Saverne, and Colmar were all Roman cities?  Let us be of our own time.  We have today something better than history to guide us.  We possess, in the nineteenth century, a principle of public right that is infinitely clearer and less negotiable than your pretended principle of nationality.  Our principle is that a population can be governed only by institutions it freely accepts, and that it can only be a part of a State through its own will and free consent.  This is the modern principle.  It is today the only foundation of order, and to it must rally whoever is a friend of liberty and a partisan of human progress.  Whether Prussia likes it or not, it is this principle that will triumph in the end.  If Alsace is and remains French it is only because she wants to be.  You will only make her German if one day she has some reason to want to be German.  Her future should depend upon her.  Today, France and Prussia fight over her, but only Alsace can decide.  You say that you claim Strasbourg and that it must be restored to you.  Of what claim do you speak?  Strasbourg belongs to no one.  Strasbourg is not a possession that we must return.  Strasbourg is not ours; she is with us.  We wish Alsace to remain among the French provinces, but please note what reason we cite for this.  Do we say it is because Louis XIV conquered her?  Not at all. Do we say it is because she is useful for our defense?  No.  Neither reasons of force not strategic interests are important here.  It is only a question of public right and we should resolve the question using modern principles.  France only has one reason for wishing to keep Alsace, which is that Alsace has valiantly shown that she wishes to remain with France.  This is why we go to war with Prussia.  Bretons and Burgundians, Parisians and Marseillais, we fight you over the matter of Alsace; but so that no one is mistaken, we do not fight to constrain her, but to stop you from constraining her.

Paris, the 27th of October, 1870

Is Alsace German or French? - Part 6

All the arguments in the world will change nothing.  You can invoke ethnicity and philology all you want.  We are not taking a university course.  We are in the midst of facts and the human heart.  If your reasoning tells you that Alsace should have a German heart; my eyes and ears assure me she has a French one.  You assert from afar that "She has a spirit of provincial opposition against France,"; I have seen her up close; I know men of all classes, all religions, all political parties and I have found this spirit of opposition nowhere.  You insinuate that she is antipathetic towards the men of Paris; I know all too well with what sympathy she welcomes them.  By heart and mind, Alsace is one of the most French of our provinces.  The Strasbourgeois has, like each of us, two fatherlands: his city of birth first, then, over it, France.  As for Germany, there is not even the thought that it ever could be her country,

Your have observed it well for two months.  On the sixth of August, France was defeated.  Alsace, bereft of troops, was open to the Germans.  How did she receive them?  The Alsatian peasants took their old guns and shovels to fight the foreigners.  Many, unable to tolerate the enemy's presence in their villages, sought refuge in the mountains, where even now they defend every ridge and ravine. The Prussians have demanded that Strasbourg surrender and you know how it responded.  But note this:  Strasbourg only had 2,500 French soldiers and the sixth artillery regiment composed of Alsatians serving as garrison.  It is the population of Strasbourg that resisted the Germans.  It was an Alsatian general that led the city.  The bishop, whose advances were so rudely rejected from the German side, was Alsatian.  Those who fought so valiantly, those who struck the enemy in such rude sorties, were Alsatians.  All these men undoubtedly spoke your language but they certainly did not consider themselves your compatriots.  And the German soldiers who launched bombs at Strasbourg, who aimed at the Cathedral, who burned the Temple-Neuf, the library, the houses, the hospital, who, while respecting the ramparts and managing the garrison, were pitiless only towards the inhabitants, state frankly, hand on heart, did they feel themselves compatriots?  Speak no more of nationality, and above all, refrain from telling the Italians: Strasbourg is ours by the same right by which Milan and Venice are yours; because the Italians would reply that they bombarded neither Milan nor Venice.  If one could still have had some doubt on the true nationality of Strasbourg and of Alsace, the doubt is no longer possible today.  The cruelty of the attack and the energy of the defense has caused the truth to flash before all eyes.  What stronger proof do you want?  As the first Christians confessed their faith, Strasbourg, by her martyrdom, has confessed that she is French.