The Days of a Man 1913 



interview- editors of the different journals, we found their views 

 ing editors ran gi n g from strongly French to uncompromisingly 

 German, although one of the latter confessed that a 

 consideration of " Butterbrot" influenced his attitude. 

 All the "German-minded" (dents chsinnig) journals 

 began with the same formula, "There is no question 

 of Elsass-Lothringen;" but one averred that "the 

 people of Alsace, being German, were more obsti- 

 nately French than any Frenchman could be!" The 

 director of the "Ober Realschule" admitted that he 

 taught French in German to youths who had spoken 

 French all their lives. 



Old Metz was unqualifiedly French, but a new city, 

 larger and richer, mainly German and devoted to 

 manufacture, had sprung up about the railway 

 Lorraine station. The problems of German Lorraine, however, 

 one with were identical with those of Alsace. For the two 

 provinces, once very different, had been welded into 

 one by common, misfortune and in both a new patri- 

 otic nationalism had grown up. This was expressed 

 in a current bit of doggerel: 



Prussien ne veux, 

 Francais ne peux, 

 Alsacien suis! * 



The Lorrainers are less demonstrative than the 

 Alsatians but equally set in their ways. According to 

 the scholarly Abbe Thilmont, "le Lorrain rage dfroid" 

 (the Lorrainer rages coldly). 



Interviews over, we made an instructive tour to the 

 battlefields of 1871 which converted part of Lorraine 



1 " Prussian I won't be, 

 French I can't be, 

 Alsatian I am!" 



c 504 



