The delayed debate in the .French Chamber on Alsace- Lorraine
has given a welcome air of reality to discussions which, to an outsider at least, have for.some time sounded very empty. M. Poincare intervened on Tuesday with a defence of the Government's policy=after, having listened very carefully to the most conflicting views. Alsatian deputies, it appears, were present in force— but by no means united. The Socialist, M. Grumbach, declared that the ulnae of all the trouble was the special regional administration (the Commissariat) set up in _1919 under M. Millera.nd ; whereas the usual case against the Government is that it presses a doctrinaire mania for assimilation and centralization a outrance. M. Poincare, taking his cue from a fellow-Lorrainer, held forth on the economic benefits to Alsace during the last ten years. But that argument bears no relation to the real grievances of the Alsatians—the constant threat to their cherished linguistic and religious traditions, the bureaucratic delay of administration, and the failure to apply overdue social reforms. And to say—as M. Poincare did the other day—that the Autonomist movement is nothing but separatism, is to show such a lack of imagina- tion as marked French policy in the Palatinate and the Rhineland from 1921-23. Something is gained, however, in that there appears to be now on all sides a tacit admis- sion of France's failure.
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