French Catholics and Germany

...The old word, Allemagne, held a suggestion of sympathy...

...and on the other, between the Catholics of northern France and those of the Rhine countries, whose memories of persecution at the hands of Bismarck, and ever actual irritation at the presence of Prussian officials (still partly regarded as aliens) prepare them for a better understanding of the French state of mind...

...People too often forget that the empire of Germany, which was the historic foe of France, was not the Germany of today, but the polyglot Holy Empire which Austria dominated...

...On the other hand, the French are logical people, and it is illogical to expect them to forget what was said with great emphasis, on the subject of Germany only a few years ago, by the very same press which now seems impatient of any delay in international reconciliation...

...even more recently no less a personage than Herr Loebe, president of the Reichstag, was appearing at a peace congress in as conspicuous a place as the Sorbonne...

...Some ardent, but not altogether wise, lovers of peace seem to think this is not enough...

...It takes rather silly optimism not to see that such repining is a perpetual danger of war...

...Yet, not quite seven years have elapsed since the signing of the Armistice, and barely six since the German plenipotentiaries left Versailles...

...There are, in America, enough German families which preferred emigration to Prussian militarism, or to the Prussian kulturkampf, to make the distinction between Prussian and German familiar in the United States...

...Before the war, meetings on the religious terrain were frequent...

...It is natural that the longest strides towards a rapprochement between France and Germany should be made, on the one side, between the Socialists and internationalists of both countries...

...It was only when Prussia's hegemony was felt through Germany, Austria and Hungary, that the picture changed...

...The French feel misgivings at the prospect of embarking on what Ambassador Houghton cheerfully describes as "an adventure in faith...

...Besides, one ought never to forget the great fact that the quarrel of France with Germany has been settled by the return of Alsace and Lorraine...

...People have been busy rebuilding, and the new aspect of their surroundings keeps their imagination from brooding over the past...

...But fear will vanish if the entrance of Germany into the League of Nations results, not in another diplomatic success nullifying the French agreement with Poland and the Petite Entente, but in territorial stabilization, which a daily growing section of French opinion would recognize by agreeing to the restoration of a colonial mandate to Germany...

...Undoubtedly the enlightened section of public opinion in France has moved toward peace with a rapidity not anticipated...

...But logical minds think otherwise, and among these logical minds must appear first and foremost ex-Chancellor Wirth, who will soon be in America to testify that his secession from his own party, the Catholic Centrum, was caused by the same fear of German nationalism which keeps the French anxious...

...Biarritz was the seaside resort of the German aristocracy, and Bismarck, then secretary at the Paris embassy, was a lion...

...There were Eucharistic congresses, and the Congres Scientifiques...

...The malaise which still subsists is fear of Germany, rather than antipathy, and will not be dispelled so long as Germany repines about her so-called grievances on the Rhine, in Silesia, in maritime Poland, in Bohemia, or in upper Italy, and wants the "auschluss" of Austria in the name of a greater Germany...

...Many people do not realize that there are in Germany some forty million citizens who would receive the French, or Polish, or Czecho-Slovakian embrace tepidly unless it was preceded by territorial modifications very nearly equivalent to the retrocession of Texas to Mexico...

...Neither are political affairs in Germany just now of a nature to create a sanguine mood...

...Sentiment changes slowly, modified by an intellectual adaptation first...

...It will not be the first French experience of that kind...

...Optimists have made up their minds that the election of Hindenburg and the presence of 80 percent of monarchists in the Reichwehr or in the German bureaucracy, do not signify...

...What a man in his position will say will carry more weight than what I am writing, but the import of his testimony will be the same...

...The importance of such a symptom can hardly be overrated...

...Every now and then, we hear from over the Alps or from over the seas an unexpected "euge I"—to be quick about it and be friends—real friends—at once, with Germany...

...Once fear is gone, inevitable economic agreements will pave the way for amity...

...Americans will best realize it by trying to visualize their Secretary of State acting the same part in the Aula Maxima of Mexico, or Tokio University...

...He is a true Christian and a gentleman...

...Such sentimental outbursts have their usefulness and ought not to be discouraged, but they invite a few remarks...

...Even as late as the reign of Napoleon III, German sympathies were more than noticeable—they were exaggerated...

...Anybody who has lived in France long enough to feel the pulse of the country must realize that, even in the devastated regions (where this article is written) there is not enough anti-German feeling to produce the mildest stanza in the shortest Hymn of Hate...