Since 1870, on the other hand, Germany has had to sit armed to defend the booty taken from France.

"We have earned in the late war respect, but hardly love," said General von Moltke soon after the conclusion of peace.

"What we have gained by arms in six months we shall have to defend by arms for fifty years." At the beginning of 1914 more than forty out of the fifty years named by Moltke had passed by and the situation had undergone no material change.

"The irreconcilability of France," writes the late Imperial Chancellor of Germany, "is a factor that we must reckon with in our political calculations.

It seems to me weakness to entertain the hope of a real and sincere reconciliation with France, so long as we have no intention of giving up Alsace-Lorraine.