And there is no such intention in Germany."[1] The annexation of two small provinces has thus made a permanent breach between two great nations, a breach which has poisoned the whole of European policy during the past half century, which has widened until it has split Europe into two huge armed camps, and which has at last involved the entire world in one of the most terrible calamities that mankind has ever known.
[Footnote 1: _Imperial Germany_, von Buelow, p.

69.] Why did Bismarck annex Alsace-Lorraine?
To strengthen, he said, the German frontier against France.

But there was another reason.

Fear of France had brought the Southern States into the Empire; fear of France should keep them there.

The permanent hostility of France was necessary to assure the continuance of Prussia's position as the supreme military power in Germany.
And so the plundered provinces became the very corner-stone of the German imperial system.