176 EMPLOYMENT OF THE PLEBISCITE C474 



Duke held that the consent of a population to live under a particular 

 government is a right subject to a great many qualifications, and it 

 would not be easy to turn sucli a doctrine into the base of an official 

 remonstrance. After all, he said, the instincts of nations stand for 

 something in this world. The German did not exceed the ancient 

 acknowledged right of nations in successful wars, when he said to 

 Alsace and Lorraine, " Conquest in war forced upon me by the 

 people of which you form a part, gives me the right to annex, if on 

 other grounds I deem it expedient, and for strategic reasons I do 

 deem it."^^ 



Equally outspoken against Gladstone's stand was Lord 

 Granville." 



Thus, leading English statesmen approved, and neutral 

 Europe sanctioned, the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to 

 Germany without the consent of the inhabitants. They ap- 

 proved and sanctioned this alienation apparently on the 

 principle of title by conquest." The United States, as we 

 have seen, emphatically expressed in 1867 its adherence to 

 the principle and practice of annexation without the con- 

 sent of the peoples thus annexed, and reasserted its stand 

 as late as 1897 and 1898. 



About two decades later, on January 22, 191 7, President 

 Wilson declared in a message to the Senate that : " No 

 peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize 

 and accept the principle that governments derive all their 

 just powers from the consent of the governed and that no 

 right anywhere exists, to hand peoples about from sover- 

 eignty to sovereignty as if they were property." He has 

 repeated this dogma in a form more terse and specific on 

 many later occasions. On April 2, 1917, he proclaimed to 



'2 Morley, vol. i, pp. 347-348. 



13 Ibid. In 1890 at the occasion of the proposed cession of Heli- 

 goland by England to Germany, Gladstone opposed the plebiscite 

 suggested by De la Warr, Lord Rosebery and others. See above, 

 p. 112. 



1* Speaking of the principle of title by prescription, Hall thinks 

 that " if the severance from France of Alsace and Lorraine had 

 been looked upon as an instance of naked conquest, it is probable 

 that European public opinion would have been greatly shocked by 

 the measure." He seems to make the point that in this case the 

 principle of nationality has lessened the value of the old principle 

 of title by prescription under which, as we must infer, France was 

 holding the old German territories (Hall, p. 120, note i). 



