Herr Michaelis, the new Chancellor, in a speech to the
Berlin reporters on Saturday last, denounced Great Britain and France for harbouring plans of conquest, whereas, by implication but not by direct statement, he was ready to abandon conquests as the price of peace. Be professed to know that, at the secret debates in the French Chamber on June 1st and 2nd, the Deputies learned of " the vast plans of conquest" to which France had secured the adhesion of Russia, before the Revolution. These plans involved the return of Alsace-Lorraine, and the acquisition of the adjacent Saar Valley and other districts on the left bank of the Rhine. Herr Michaelis, declining to admit that Alsace was ever French, declared that such plans showed that France, like her Allies, was "actuated by the lust of conquest." Yet it is self-evident that France will not- conclude peace without recovering the provinces torn from her in 1871.
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