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