An inhabitant of Alsace-Lorraine can not mail his letters in Germany. For example, Wissembourg is on the border of the Palatinate. There is a great temptation for the citizens of this town to assure a rapid delivery of their letters and their escape from annoying censorship by making use of the German mail system. A music teacher, Mlle. Lina Sch---- was sentenced to pay a fine of one hundred marks in March, 1917, for an infraction of this sort. The war council at Saarbruck, which pronounced this sentence, had already, in June, 1916, sentenced for like cause, the Spanish Consul, to the payment of a fine of eighty marks because he had allowed a citizen of Sarreguimine to have letters to his sons, who were refugees at Lausanne, addressed to the Spanish Consulate.
In addition, German hostility to the Alsatians is shown by a number of childish measures against Alsatian uniforms and costumes, in proportion as they resemble the French.
In all seriousness the question arose of forbidding the Catholic Clergy to wear the soutane, as it was the custom in the Latin countries. It was given up; but steps were taken in the case of the firemen.
The _Nouvelle Gazette_ of Strassburg published an official notice, dated the ninth of December, 1915, which emphasized an order suppressing the uniforms worn by the Alsatian firemen because the cut was French, as was the cap, and complained that this order was not everywhere observed:
Recently, in the course of a fire which broke out near Molsheim, it is an established fact that the firemen wore their old Alsatian uniforms, and that the fire alarm was sounded by means of the old clarions of the type in use in France. The _Kreisdirection_ finds itself obliged to insist that the suppressed uniforms disappear, and that the clarions do likewise; and to ask that it be informed of contraventions that happen in the future.
Other societies and associations, such as the singing societies which frequently still wear uniforms recalling those of the French collegians, ought to lay aside the forbidden garments, which are to be entrusted to the guard of the police.
But these puerilities seem insignificant compared to other things to which the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been subjected, things which unite them more firmly than ever to the French and the Belgians of the invaded regions.