19133 Need of Enlightened Leadership 



Even if the Alsace-Lorrainers, through their language and 

 their origin, were a hundred times more German than they really 

 are, Germany has lost in the eyes of humanity, through the 

 manner in which she has treated that people, all right to exact 

 that Alsace-Lorraine should remain under German domination. 



I do not pass this judgment with a light heart. I have often 

 traveled through Alsace during the years that preceded the 

 war; and I have been a witness to the spirit with which the 

 Alsatians were governed. 



. . . Ah! if German mentality were different! Then, within 

 the German people itself, voices would be raised, saying: We 

 have enough of this hatred of forty years! We wish to show 

 the world that we seriously wish for peace! We wish not only to 

 give up all ideas of new annexations (that is to say, new political 

 mistakes) but also we wish to atone for our mistake of 1871. We 

 wish, for the sake of a durable peace, not only to give back 

 Belgium and the territories occupied during this war, but we 

 also wish to give back Alsace-Lorraine. 



. . . This would require a new man, a man endowed with 

 a new courage, a man having not only some civic courage, but 

 also entirely new ideas, foreign to Prussian tradition. 



If such a man revealed himself he would soon have, I am 

 convinced, a great portion of the German people on his side. 

 For we are in the habit of listening to words that come from 

 above. 



The question of Alsace-Lorraine is the touchstone by which 

 to judge of the sincerity of the German government; through it 

 we will know whether we may hope for a change in the 

 mentality of the German people. . . . 



The German people can derive an immense reward from the 

 abandonment of Alsace-Lorraine; that prize is the confidence of 

 the civilized world ! . . . 



At Nuremberg I made the acquaintance of the 

 distinguished jurist, Dr. Heinrich Lammasch of 

 Vienna, professor of International Law and member 

 of the Hague Tribunal, a man of exalted nobility of 

 soul, to whom I shall later recur. 1 



1 See Chapter LV, page 764. 



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