Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV ALSACE Most Americans have sympathized with France in the loss of her provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, as the result of the Franco-Prussian war of 1871. This sentiment is worthy, but is not founded on material grounds to-day, because the record shows that this detached territory is far more prosperous under German administration. In forty years the population of Alsace- Lorraine has nearly tripled, and produces a vast amount of grain, tobacco, iron and coal, and with an area of only 5,580 square miles, one-sixth the area of Ireland, is a veritable beehive of cotton, woollen, silks and chemical industries. Contrast the state of Alsace-Lorraine with that of misgoverned Ireland, where the population is to-day only one-third of the number of people living in Ireland seventy years ago. While English rule has been draining the life- blood of Ireland, leaving only the remnants of a people, this little territory along the banks of the Rhine has gone forward by leaps and bounds,with the people so contented that sentiment altogether throughout the province has steadily changed in favor of Germany, and the Alsatians have furnished their full quota of soldiers for the Fatherland. Ireland, too, has iron and coal, and could manufacture cotton, wool and silks, but it is not for the commercial interest of England to have an industrial Ireland. She must always be confined under the British Empire to remain an agricultural spot, a rear garden to supply food for England. The district of Alsace-Lorraine contains the same percentage of Roman Catholics as Ireland, about 76 per cent. The beautiful Rhine flows all along its borders, filled with vessels carrying commerce of the province to the world. The River Shannon of Ireland is as grand and as beautiful, but you may go along i...