The notion of here reprinting my notes of Alsatian travel was suggested by a recent French work--_À travers l'Alsace en flânant_, from the pen of M. André Hallays. This delightful writer had already published several volumes dealing with various French provinces, more especially from an archaeological point of view. In his latest and not least fascinating _flânerie_ he gives the experiences of several holiday tours in Germanized France.
My own sojourns, made at intervals among French friends, _annexés_ both of Alsace and Lorraine, were chiefly undertaken in order to realize the condition of the German Emperor's French subjects. But I naturally visited many picturesque sites and historic monuments in both, the forfeited territories being especially rich. Whilst volume after volume of late years have appeared devoted to French travel, holiday tourists innumerable jotting their brief experiences of well-known regions, strangely enough no English writer has followed my own example. No work has here appeared upon Alsace and Lorraine. On the other side of the Channel a vast literature on the subject has sprung up. Novels, travels, reminiscences, pamphlets on political and economic questions, one and all breathing the same spirit, continue to appear in undiminished numbers.
Ardent spirits still fan the flame of revolt. The burning thirst for re-integration remains unquenched. Garbed in crape, the marble figure of Strasburg still holds her place on the Place de la Concorde. The French language, although rigidly prohibited throughout Germanized France, is studied and upheld more sedulously than before Sedan. And after the lapse of forty years a German minister lately averred that French Alsatians were more French than ever. _Les Noëllets_ of René Bazin, M. Maurice Barrès' impassioned series, _Les Bastions de l'Est_, enjoy immense popularity, and within the last few months have appeared two volumes which fully confirm the views of their forerunners--M. Hallays' impressions of many wayfarings and _Après quarante ans_ by M. Jules Claretie, the versatile, brilliant and much respected administrator-general of the Comédie Française.
Whilst in these days of peace and arbitration propaganda the crime of enforced denationalization seems more heinous than ever, there appears little likelihood of the country conquered by Louis XIV., and re-conquered by German arms a century and a half later, again waving the Tricolour.
