WAR SELECTION IN WESTERN EUROPE 147 



the most depraved of Parisian sensations are invented to meet the 

 jaded fancy of gilded youth from across the sea. 



A French cartoon more than a century old pictures a peasant 

 ploughing in the field, hopeless and dejected, a frilled and cynical 

 marquis on his back, tapping his gilded snuff-box. A recent one shows 

 the peasant still at the plough and equally hopeless. The marquis is 

 gone, but in his place sits a soldier armed to the teeth, who ought him- 

 self to be at the plough, while on the soldier's back rides the money- 

 lender, colder and more crushing than the dainty marquis, for the 

 money-lender is the visible exponent of the war-trader, most sinister 

 and most burdensome of all purveyors of implements of destruction. 



For more than forty years past France has lived under the shadow 

 of war. The loss of Alsace-Lorraine cut a deep wound in French emo- 

 tions as well as in French pride. The noble attitude of the lost 

 provinces stimulated the natural determination for the " war of honor," 

 the " war of revenge." But as time went on, it became more and more 

 evident that such a war could never be successful. And after the col- 

 lapse of the inflated militarism of Boulenger, and in view of the sordid 

 failure of military honor as shown in the " Dreyfus case," the people 

 of France began generally to doubt the righteousness as well as the wis- 

 dom of war against Germany. In 1913, the influential men of France 

 were willing to meet half way the " Friedensfreunde " of Germany. 

 The writer was present at Nurnberg in 1913, at a great mass meeting 

 in which the Baron D'Estournelles de Constant spoke warmly • and elo- 

 quently for international friendship. France was becoming ready to 

 forgive if not to forget. But this the Prussian military system in 

 Alsace-Lorraine would not permit. They had left the united province 

 of Elsass-Lothringen without citizens' rights as " Reiclisland " or Im- 

 perial territory, it being an " Eroberung" or conquest. They had sub- 

 jected it to the process of " Entw el seining" or deforeignization, by 

 means of trivial and burdensome " Abwelirgesetze" or special statutes 

 directed mainly against the use of the French language. The people of 

 Alsace-Lorraine, those of Germanic and French stock alike, could not 

 forget. And for this reason France could not. Had the united prov- 

 inces been given full autonomy within the German Empire and their 

 people been made full citizens instead of "Deutsche Zweiter Classe," 

 " the nightmare of Europe," 2 the question of Alsace-Lorraine would 

 long ago have vanished from European politics. 



It is a common saying in France, that the Frenchmen of to-day are 

 small because our tall ancestors were killed in our victorious wars. 



The statistics behind this statement have been made the basis of a 

 critical study by Professor Vernon L. Kellogg. A synopsis of the re- 

 sults of this study is given in Social Hygiene, December, 19 14. 3 



2 "La cauchemar de 1 'Europe. " 



s It should be clearly noted that a mere decline in stature is in itself of 



