4 SEPTEMBER 1926, Page 3

There has been some disagreeable rioting at Colmar in Alsace.

How much of this was directly due to the Heimatbund we cannot say. We regret the trouble, but we cannot feel surprised. We publish elsewhere an article by Sir Robert Donald, who has lately been on the spot. The French seem to forget the change in the population through two generations. The brutal annexation of the provinces by Germany in 1871 and her unsympathetic methods of government led to a steady exodus of all such Frenchmen as were not tied to the land. Their places were just as steadily filled by the Germans, Prussian officials and so on. Paris has given deep offence, as we feared she would, by the handling of the question of religious teaching, and a narrow insistence on the French language.