The French Counter-Off ensive 89 France possession of the rest of the Alsace-Lorraine territory would in fact have permitted France to in- vade Germany quite as easily as in former times be- fore she lost the Rhineland. In addition there was, of course, the narrower but real value of an early reconquest of the " lost prov- inces." It was to such a reconquest France had looked forward for forty-three years. For every French soldier the knowledge that French armies were again on the Rhine and the Saar would be a tre- mendous driving force. The invasion, too, would deprive Germany instantly of two fertile provinces, from which she had hoped to draw supplies and sol- diers. France could also expect to enlist thousands of Alsatians and to promote indiscipline and desertion among Alsatians then actually wearing German uni- forms. But in the wider field the French invasion of Alsace was recognized as the answer to Germany's thrust at France. Germany had attempted to strike France on the left flank. France had retaliated by coming through the German left flank. German success meant opening a road toward Paris and into North- ern France. France was striving to open a way into South Germany and similarly toward Berlin. If the German offensive failed French armies would be nearer than the German forces in Belgium and North- ern France both to the Rhine and to the German capi- tal. It must be remembered, too, that France, with her