_Oderint dum metuant._ Against French demands for restitution they presented a firm and unchangeable negative; it was kinder so and juster, to allow no opening for hope, no loophole for negotiation, no intervention by other Powers.

Alsace-Lorraine were German by the right of the hundred thousand German soldiers who had perished to conquer them.

Any appearance of weakness would have led to hopes which could never be realised, discussions which could have had no result.

The answer to all suggestions was to be found in the strength of Germany; the only diplomacy was to make the army so strong that no French statesman, not even the mob of Paris, could dream of undertaking single-handed a war of revenge.
This was not enough; it was necessary besides to isolate France.

There were many men in Europe who would have wished to bring about a new coalition of the armies by whose defeat Germany had been built up--France and Austria, Denmark and the Poles; then it was always to be expected that Russia, who had done so much for Germany in the past, would cease to regard with complacency the success of her protege; after all, the influence of the Czar in Europe had depended upon the divisions of Germany as much as had that of France.