Our three days in Biarritz had grown to three short weeks before we were able to break the spell of the alluring Grande Plage and shape our course in a northeasterly direction, along the foothills of the Pyrenees, through the picturesque regions of PÉrigord and Limousin to Tours and the chÂteaux country. Bayonne, the fortress city, looked peaceful enough with its tapering cathedral spires rising above the great earthen ramparts, now grass-grown and long disused to war. Not far from Bayonne the road forked; we were in doubt whether to continue straight on or to turn to the left. A group of workingmen near by ceased their toil as we drew near to ask for information. The answer to our question was very different from what we expected. One of them approached the car, brandishing a scythe in a manner more hostile than friendly, and asked if we were Germans. This question concerning our nationality came with all the force of a threat. The restless scythe cut a nearer airy swath. He had recognized the German make of our car, and was convinced that we belonged to the hated nation allemande. A German motor car is not the safest kind of an introduction to these French peasants, especially when the vin du pays has circulated freely. If appearances counted for anything, this particular peasant was quite inclined to use his scythe for more warlike purposes than those for which it was originally intended. But his companions, more peaceably disposed, seizing him, drew him back from the car and gave us, although reluctantly, the necessary information.

It was not our first experience of this kind. In France there is a strong sentiment against Germany. Our German car was often the target for unfriendly observation. This fierce ill feeling appears to be increasing. Never since the war of 1870 has there been such a period of military activity in the two countries. Germany is raising her army to a total of nearly nine hundred thousand men, at an initial cost of two hundred and fifty million dollars, and a subsequent annual cost of fifty million dollars. France has decided to meet these warlike preparations by keeping under the colors for another year the soldiers whose term of service would have expired last fall. This measure adds about two hundred thousand soldiers to the fighting strength of the French army. This increase of armament involves necessarily the admission of the increase of suspicion and antagonism.

At such a time of tension and suspense it was for us a rare privilege to motor through the French provinces, to stop in the small towns and villages and to hear from the lips of the people themselves an expression of their attitude toward Germany. Rural France is conservative; opinions and ideas form slowly, yet there can be no doubt but that their views represent the sentiment of the French nation which is so largely agricultural. No feature of our long tour through France was more instructive than this opportunity to study at first hand the influences at work to widen the gulf between the two nations. We conversed with soldiers, officers, peasants in the fields, and casual French acquaintances whom we met in the cafÉs and hotels. Every one admitted the gravity of the situation, and said that nothing short of the actual shadow of German invasion could have induced France to submit to the tremendous sacrifices incident to the large increase of the army.

The enthusiasm with which France has consented to the enormous sacrifices entailed by increasing the army on so large a scale shows how widespread is the impression of impending conflict. France realizes that there is only one way to prevent war, and that is to be so strong that Germany will hesitate to take the fatal step. There have been past menaces of invasion, and while it is true that Germany has not made war for over forty years, she has repeatedly threatened it. William I and Moltke wanted to attack France in 1874 and again in 1875, before she had recovered from the effects of 1870, to make it impossible for her again to become a power of the first rank. Russia and England supported France; Germany drew back to wait for another chance. Professor Lamprecht, the great German historian, regrets that Germany did not hurl her armies against France at that time. In the DelcassÉ crisis of 1905 France was again threatened. We know now that the Morocco negotiations between France and Germany in 1911 kept Europe on the verge of war for months.

This movement toward a more vigorous expression of French national spirit, while gathering strength for the last ten years, actually dates from the sending of the gunboat Panther to Agadir in 1911. This was the igniting spark. It was in that moment that the French nation found itself. The generation that lived through and followed the disastrous war of 1870 was saddened and subdued. There was little of that spirit of national self-confidence; politics played a larger role than patriotism. But now a new generation is to the front. Young France is coming into power, and the result is a rebirth of self-confidence and aggressiveness along patriotic lines. It will no longer be possible for Germany to be successful in a policy of intimidation against France, as she was in the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The new France is too patriotic, too proud, too conscious of her own strength, to concede to any unreasonable demand for economic compensation that Germany or Austria might make.

If there were no other reason for possibility of war, the internal situation in Germany itself would be enough to place France on her guard. In spite of Germany's industrial progress, the struggle of the masses for bread is nowhere more bitter. The intense competition in the markets of the world, the necessity of paying interest on borrowed capital, the fact of a vast and rapidly increasing population—all this spells low wages in a country where taxes are high and where the burdens of armament are fast becoming unbearable. Such conditions make for socialism. Already the socialists form the most powerful party in the Reichstag. The Kaiser wishes peace, but he is, above all, a believer in monarchical institutions. If socialism continues to spread with its present rapidity, no one doubts that he would stake Germany's supremacy in a foreign war in order to unite the nation around him and to divert the people from their struggle for a more democratic form of government. A successful war with France would not only mean rich provinces, a big war indemnity, but it would also mean a new prestige for the Hohenzollern government, sufficient to carry it through the socialistic perils of another generation.

In view of these facts, it is not surprising that the French nation considers a conflict inevitable, and especially when they see the Kaiser appealing to his already overtaxed and discontented people to make a supreme sacrifice. With Germany the question is one of economic existence. She can feed her population for only a fraction of a year. More and more she finds herself dependent upon rival nations for foodstuffs and raw materials. She has built up great steel and iron industries, but the supply of ore in the province of Silesia will be exhausted, at the present rate of consumption, in about twenty-five years. Germany will then be totally dependent upon France, Spain, and Sweden for iron ore. But France has an eighty per cent superiority over Spain and Sweden in her supply of this material. Her richest mines are situated in Basse-Lorraine, hardly more than a cannon shot from the German frontier. By the conquest of a few miles in Lorraine, she would secure enough iron ore to supply her iron and steel industries for centuries. A suggestive commentary upon Germany's aggressive plans may be noted in the German atlas of Steiler. It writes the names of different countries and their cities in the spelling of each country. The French cities and provinces are written in French, with the exception of provinces of Basse-Lorraine, Franche-ComtÉ, and Bourgogne. These are written in German.

Another force in Germany making for war is the Pan-German League. This is the war party of the armor-plate factories of the officers of the army and navy, of a large part of the German press, of the Crown Prince, of many who have intimate relations with the Kaiser. The spectacular demonstrations of the Crown Prince in the Reichstag against the too peaceful policy of the Chancellor at the time of the Morocco negotiations, the sending of the Panther to Agadir, the enormous increase of the army and navy in recent years, the arbitrary suppression of French influence in Alsace-Lorraine, have all been the fruits of its efforts. There can be no question of the tremendous power of this organization which is so close to the heart of the Crown Prince. If the Kaiser should die to-morrow, France might well have reason to distrust the warlike and impulsive young ruler who would ascend the Hohenzollern throne. The Crown Prince has recently written a book called Germany in Arms. Its warlike fervor shows how little he is in sympathy with the emperor's loyalty to peace. What makes the influence of the Crown Prince all the more dangerous is the great discontent to-day in Germany with the government's foreign policy "of spending hundreds of millions upon a fruitless and pacific imperialism."

Added to all these influences which are straining the relations between France and Germany, is the question of Alsace-Lorraine, for more than two centuries a French province and ceded to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War as a part of the price of peace. It is now a generation and more that Germany has tried to assimilate the province, but with so little success that to-day the people persist more than ever in their sympathy with French culture and their hostility toward Germany. There has been immigration; probably two fifths of the population are Germans, but the two peoples do not mix. The silent struggle between two civilizations goes on. The reason for the failure of German government in Alsace-Lorraine is due to its refusal to recognize this dual civilization. Alsace is largely French in sympathy; but instead of letting the people cling to their local customs, Germany has tried to make them think and speak German, and adopt the German ways. Instead of enjoying an equality with the other states in the regulation of local affairs, the province is treated as a vassal state, the governor being responsible to the Kaiser. Naturally such a system of government means the continual clash of the two nationalities. The teaching of French and French history has been almost suppressed in the schools, and the younger generation compelled to learn German. "But they are French at heart, and after leaving school return again to the traditions of their family. After forty years, no music stirs them like the Marseillaise." It is said that the little Alsatian schoolboys, when on a trip to the frontier, decorate their hats and buttonholes with the French colors. No one can be long in Strassburg without realizing the futility of Germany's campaign against French influence. It is true that there is a certain veneer of German civilization; the policemen wear the same uniform as the Berlin police; German names appear over the principal shops; but in the stores and cafÉs one hears the middle-class Alsatians speaking French; French clothes, French customs prevail. In a word, the people, without French support, have gradually become more French in feeling and in culture than at the moment of annexation. One effect of this struggle against Germany's brutal and arbitrary policy has been to start a strong undercurrent of sympathy in France. In many of the French towns one sees Alsace postcards in the store windows. The picture on one card was a reproduction of a French painting. A soldier appears on the lookout in a forest. Not far away is a captive bound to a tree. He is watching with expectant joy the coming of the soldier. One can easily guess that the captive is Alsace, the soldier, France. We might also speak of the petty annoyances practiced by the German authorities in Alsace upon any one suspected of French sympathy. Sporting clubs have been dissolved. One reads of French sportsmen who have been refused permission to rent "shootings." The most recent measure of oppression gives the governor of the province absolute power to suppress all French newspapers, as well as all societies supposed to favor French culture.

This is only a part of the evidence at hand, which gives the impartial observer reason to believe that the friction of nationalities in Alsace is the prelude to the larger and more terrible struggle to-day is regarded in France as inevitable. At the School of Political Science in the sorbonne at Paris, where the superiority of German methods used to be accepted without question, it is said the professors can now hardly mention them, for fear of hostile demonstrations.

This question of Franco-German relations has already overshadowed Europe. All attempts to promote a more friendly understanding have been fruitless. Even though the present tension be only temporary, it is very doubtful if there can be any approach to better relations until Germany has solved the question of Alsace-Lorraine, abandoning her policy of rough-shod assimilation, recognizing the existence of a dual civilization, granting autonomy of local affairs, and welcoming the province, on an equal footing with the other German states, to the brotherhood of the empire. With this source of discord removed, Alsace-Lorraine might become a bond instead of a barrier between France and Germany. Such a solution, however remote, would be an important step toward a more auspicious era of friendly feeling, of good faith. Unfortunately, the Kaiser is opposed to this conciliatory policy. The fact that Alsace-Lorraine belongs to the empire as a whole, and is therefore a bond of unity between the German states, makes him unwilling to disturb the present arrangement and to recognize anything approaching a dual government in Alsace-Lorraine.

In the light of the above facts, our encounter with the French peasant was of deep significance. We could see behind it the forces—economic, political, and sentimental—that are at work to divide France and Germany. Naturally, we were on the lookout for any incident of this kind which would give us a clearer view of the great question which is placing such terrible burdens upon the two countries.

We shall not easily forget our experience in one French town. It was Sunday evening, and the street was crowded with peasants and artisans. One of us had stuck in his hat a Swiss feather, such as is commonly worn in the Tyrol of southern Germany. He purchased a French newspaper, and after glancing through it, dropped it in the gutter. This harmless act very nearly involved us in serious trouble. A burly Frenchman, noticing the feather and taking him for a German, resented the apparently contemptuous way in which the journal had been thrown in the street. "Vous avez insultÉ la patrie," he said in a loud voice. Like a flash the rumor spread in the street that three Germans had insulted France, and a threatening crowd surrounded us. A restaurant offering the nearest refuge, we stepped inside to order une demi-tasse and to wait until the excitement had subsided. The garcon refused to serve us. Outside, the crowd grew larger. Then a policeman appeared. Upon learning that we were Americans, he quickly appreciated the humor of the situation, and explained the misunderstanding to the crowd pressing around the door. The excitement abated as quickly as it arose, and we were allowed to continue our walk without further interruption.

Mont-de-Marsan has little to relieve the monotony of its narrow village life. We bumped over cobbled streets to the HÔtel Richelieu, securing pleasant rooms which opened on an attractive little court, enlivened by a murmuring fountain. Dinner was hardly over when the silence of the country began to settle along the deserted streets. Such a soporific environment was sleep-compelling. An alarm clock was not necessary, for at early dawn the street resounded with a medley of noises, the varied repertoire of the barnyard,—a hundred of them, in fact. Geese, chickens, goats, and sheep were all tuning up for the village fair. It is a mystery how we motored through that maze of poultry and small wooden stands heaped with fruits, poultry, game, even dry goods—a kind of open-air department store. The clerks were grizzled peasant women, some of them eating their breakfast of grapes and dry bread, others displaying tempting fruit to entice us into a purchase.