Shuttlecock-on-the-Rhine

Seven times in 300 years the German river port of Kehl on the Rhine has fallen into French hands, an incidental prize in the long series of wars between Germans and French. Last week, for the seventh time, the French handed Kehl back to the Germans.

The story of transfer No. 7 dates from 1940, when the Nazis occupied Alsace-Lorraine and decided, now that both sides of the Rhine were theirs, to include traditionally German Kehl as part of Strasbourg, which is on the west side of the Rhine. When the Germans retreated, the French moved in, cheerfully accepting the Nazi consolidation. They ordered Kehl's 12,000 Germans, who had already been evacuated by the Nazis, to stay out so that Frenchmen in bombed-out Strasbourg could live in Kehl. At first the French strung barbed wire around Kehl and made as if to annex it permanently as a sort of French beachhead on the east bank of the Rhine. But in 1949, in talks in Washington, the French agreed to return control of Kehl to Germany within four years. Four years to the day, they kept their bargain. French families moved back across the river to Strasbourg, where new housing has since been provided. Hundreds of Germans danced and pranced through Kehl's streets singing songs and waving bright torches. Churchbells rang joyously, and. while French occupation troops looked on impassively, the celebrants tore down French street signs, replaced them with signs in Teutonic script.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.