Ten Years Near the German Frontier: A Retrospect and a Warning. Egan Maurice Francis

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СКАЧАТЬ every second Sunday. In the schools both Danish and German was permitted; in the courts of law both languages were used. You made your choice! The world was deceived by an unscrupulous Assembly and the German press into the belief that Slesvig was German, lovingly German, and that the Danes were merely restless malcontents, hating the beneficent Prussian rule simply from a perverted sense of their own importance.

      The crucial moment came in 1864. Denmark had no real friends in Europe. The United States, if her people had understood the matter, would have been sympathetic; but, at the moment, she was fighting for her own existence as a nation. The European powers, in spite of all their statecraft, allowed themselves to be blinded. Austria, apparently proud and noble, allowed herself, as usual, to be made the tool of Prussia. The two powers, on the false pretence that the right of Christian IX. to the succession to the duchies was involved, forced Denmark, which stood alone, to surrender Slesvig-Holstein and Lauenburg. This was the beginning of the mighty German Empire; it made the Kiel Canal possible, and laid the foundation of the German Navy. Slesvig, too, supplied the best sailors in the world. Bismarck, when he cynically treated Slesvig as a pawn in his game, had his eye on a future navy – a navy which would one day force the British from the dominion of the sea.

      He had his way. He became master of the Baltic and the North Sea. Prussia, in forcing the Danish king to cede Slesvig, admitted his right to the Duchies; yet the pretext for war on Denmark had been that no such right existed. Prussia soon threw off her ally, Austria. She did not want a half owner in the Holstein Canal or in the coming fleet at Kiel.

      It must be remembered that, when Christian IX. had ascended the throne of Denmark, it had been with the consent of all the great European powers. They had practically guaranteed him the right to rule Slesvig-Holstein, and yet England and France and Russia stood by and allowed the outrage to take place. France made an attempt to satisfy her conscience. In the treaty of peace France had this clause inserted:

      'H.M. the Emperor of Austria hereby transfers to H.M. the King of Prussia all the right which according to the Treaty of Peace of Vienna of October 30, 1864, he had acquired in respect to the Duchies of Slesvig and Holstein, provided that the northern districts of Slesvig shall be united to Denmark, if the inhabitants by a free vote declare their desire to that effect.'

      This was a 'scrap of paper' – nothing more! Nevertheless a scrap of paper may be inconvenient. Austria, never scrupulous when the acquisition of new territory was expedient, was willing to help Prussia to tear it up. Bosnia and Herzogovina raised their heads. Austria wanted help from Prussia. Here was the Prussian chance to induce her to abrogate her part in clause fifty of the peace treaty. What matter? Denmark, in time, must be German, as Slesvig was German, in spite of all right. Austria would play the same game with the Slavs as Prussia had played with the Danes. Individuals might have consciences, but nations had no system of ethics, and therefore no canons (except those of expediency), to rule such consciences as they had. Prussia treated the right of the Danes in Slesvig, guaranteed by a 'scrap of paper,' to a free vote as to their fate, with contempt. It had amused Bismarck to deceive France, the exponent of the new democracy in Europe, but that was all. Slesvig was to be crushed until it became quiescently Prussian. Prussia needed it, therefore it must be Prussian. Fiat!

      This is a plain, unvarnished tale. Few of my fellow-countrymen have known it. Some who knew it hazily concluded that Slesvig had become German of its own free will that it might belong to a prosperous and great empire. Others, who remembered that, even in their struggle for freedom in 1864, the Danes paused for a moment to give us their aid at the request of President Lincoln, had a vague idea that wrong had been done somehow; but how great the wrong, and how terrible the effect of the wrong was to be on the history of the world, none of them even dreamed; and yet it was plain enough to those who watched the policy of blood and iron of this, the new Germany.

      People who believed that Prussia had any respect for an engagement that might seem to work against her own designs ought to have been warned by the experience of Denmark. But there were those who believed that the acquisition of Heligoland from the British was a mere trifle, in which Germany had the worse of the bargain, as there are people who held that the Danish West Indies were of no manner of importance to us. They classed these acquisitions with that of Alaska – 'Seward's folly!'

      And, in 1864, the old powers of Europe were so satisfied with their own methods, or so engaged with internal questions, that they let the monstrous tyranny of the conquest of Slesvig pass almost in silence. Prussia alone kept her eyes on one thing – the increase of her military power. In 1878 she induced Austria to abrogate her part in the treaty of Vienna of October 30, 1864. Austria agreed to give up any rights acquired by her in Slesvig-Holstein under the fifth clause of that treaty. This withdrawal (not to be irreverent, it was like the washing of the hands of Pontius Pilate) left Slesvig naked to her enemy. The Prussian autocrats chuckled when they found themselves bound by a 'scrap of paper' to the restoration of the northern districts of Slesvig to Denmark, 'if the inhabitants by a free vote declare their desire to that effect.'

      The Imperial German statesmen, astute and unscrupulous, have always taken religion into consideration in making their propaganda. The German Crown Prince's sympathy with the same methods as used by Napoleon Bonaparte was perhaps inherited from his ancestors, as Napoleon, too, knew the political value of religion. The Church, an enslaved Church in a despotic state, – the reverse of Cavour's famous maxim – has always been one of statesmen's tools. They have never hesitated to use religion as the means of accomplishing the ends of the state. In fact, the Catholic Church in Germany was in great danger of being enslaved. The old wars of the popes and the emperors – so little understood in modern times – would be very possible, had the victory of Germany been a probability.

      Let us see what happened in Slesvig. Since '64, Prussia has governed Slesvig. This rule has been a prolonged and constant attempt to force the Danes from their homes. A very distinguished and rather liberal German diplomatist, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, once asked me, 'As an American, tell me frankly what is wrong with our position in Slesvig?'

      'Everything,' I said. 'You seem even to assume that the religion of the people should be the religion of the state.'

      'The state religion in Slesvig is as the state religion in Denmark, Lutheranism.'

      'But not Germanised Lutheranism. I have the testimony of a Lutheran pastor himself, the Reverend D. Troensegaard-Hansen, to the effect that the authorities in Slesvig prefer German materialistic teaching to Danish Christianity, and that all kinds of influence is brought to bear on the clergy to make them German in their point of view. If, in the Philippines, we attempted to do the things you do in Slesvig, there would be no end of trouble.'

      He laughed. 'But democrats as you are, you will never keep your promise to grant those people self-government.'

      'We will.'

      'Your democracy is not statesmanlike. It would be fatal for us to let the Slesvigers defy our power. They must be part of Germany; there is no way out.'

      'Either you want difficulties with them or you are worrying them just as a great mastiff worries a small dog.'

      'But suddenly a gymnast raises the Danish flag, or somebody utters a seditious speech in Danish, or school books are circulated in which ultra-Danish views of history are given. If a country is to be ruled by us, it must be a German country. We can tolerate no difference that tends to denationalise our population. It is a dream – the Danish idea that we shall give up what we have taken or, rather, what has been ceded to us.'

      'Without the consent of the people?'

      'Who are the people? When you answer that I will tell what is truth. Come, you are a democrat; by and by, when you Americans are older, you will see democracy from a more practical point of view.'

      The practical point of view in Slesvig was squeezing out gradually the independence of the СКАЧАТЬ