The
formula had, therefore, to cover both contingencies. The word
"righted" guaranteed satisfaction to France, but did not read as a
commitment to simple annexation. But why speak of the wrong done by
_Prussia_ in _1871_? The word Prussia was, of course, intended
to remind the South Germans that Alsace-Lorraine belonged not to
them but to Prussia. Why speak of peace unsettled for "fifty years,"
and why the use of "1871"? In the first place, what the French and
the rest of the world remembered was 1871. That was the nodal
point of their grievance. But the formulators of the Fourteen Points
knew that French officialdom planned for more than the Alsace-Lorraine
of 1871. The secret memoranda that had passed between the Czar's
ministers and French officials in 1916 covered the annexation of the
Saar Valley and some sort of dismemberment of the Rhineland. It was
planned to include the Saar Valley under the term "Alsace-Lorraine"
because it had been part of Alsace-Lorraine in 1814, though it had
been detached in 1815, and was no part of the territory at the close
of the Franco-Prussian war. The official French formula for annexing
the Saar was to subsume it under "Alsace-Lorraine" meaning the
Alsace-Lorraine of 1814-1815. By insistence on "1871" the President
was really defining the ultimate boundary between Germany and France,
was adverting to the secret treaty, and was casting it aside.
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