Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/330

 316 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

A German politician has called Art. V of the Prague treaty a mortgage issued to the Danish population of Sleswic, which cannot lawfully be canceled without the consent of its holders. About the result of a vote taken on national lines in Sleswic nobody has any doubt. But were Sleswic's fate made dependent upon a referendum of the general electorate of Germany today, with the question put as a choice between a diminution of terri- tory and the redemption of a national word of honor, the scales, there is reason to fear, would sink in favor of holding on to what they have. " No foot of German soil," says Kaiser Wilhelm, " shall ever be ceded except over the bodies of my dead sol- diers." That sort of sentiment still strikes a responsive chord in the breasts of millions of his subjects.

It is a fact, also and one which Denmark might do well in taking ad notam that of all the speakers and writers who in Germany of late years have condemned the Prussian adminis- tration of Sleswic and urged fairness in dealing with the Danes, not one has been known to advocate a division according to nationality and the return to Denmark of the northern districts. All appear to agree that wherever the German flag has once been raised it cannot again be hauled down.

If such, then, are the ideal and the goal, pretexts will easily be found. The arguments advanced in justification of the annexation of Sleswic, and its political sequel, may be grouped under the following heads: (i) geographical, (2) ethnical, (3) historico-political, and (4) cultural.

I. THE GEOGRAPHICAL ARGUMENT.

Sleswic, it is asserted, is needed to "round off" the domains of the empire. It is part of the German mainland, a continua- tion northward of German Holstein, no natural barrier of any kind separating the "twin duchies." No geographical line can be drawn between the two nationalities, which, furthermore, largely overlap, making any scheme of division impracticable.

This, were it true, would seem a somewhat artificial defense of forbidding the singing of Danish songs and the wearing of Danish colors. Moreover, is not the division of populations on geographical lines a device which might with profit be relegated