Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/331

 THE NORTH SLESWIC QUESTION

among the relics of a past age ? But a glance at the map will convince any unprejudiced observer that it is not so. Sleswic is an integral part of the Cimbrian peninsula, the southward extension of Danish Jutland, field joining to field and forests being cut into halves where the political ditch has been dug. And as to the narrow belt where Danish and German meet let the majority rule. Such a line of demarkation would not only be theoretically just, but also easy of determination and practi- cally well defined, as witness the percentage map inserted above.

II. THE ETHNICAL ARGUMENT. .

But, it has been alleged, racially the people are Germans ; the Sleswicians are Low Germans like the Holsteinians.

This is the plea of ignorance, betraying an utter lack of acquaintance with real conditions, and scarcely worth refuting. As Sleswic geographically is part of Jutland, so its people ethnically and linguistically belong to the same stock as the northern Jutes i. e., they are Danes, Scandinavians, in racial traits and in speech. In rural North Sleswic this stock is abso- lutely pure ; the family tree of the Dane has no branches point- ing southward. And even south of the Sleswic " Mason and Dixon line" the population still exhibits all the marks of an essentially Danish origin the facial characteristics, the patro- nymics. The North Sleswic popular idiom is chemically free from German admixtures; and the place-names those incor- ruptible witnesses throughout the length and breadth of the land are hopelessly Danish, though ofttimes caricatured almost beyond identification by Prussian spelling reformers. And those grand old monuments, the rune stones, of which several have been unearthed in the southernmost part of the province, bear mute but unimpeachable testimony to the fact that nine hundred years ago this country was Danish and Danish men were engaged in the same struggle, with the same foe, for the maintenance of their land and their language.

III. THE HISTORICO-POLITICAL ARGUMENT.

Germany has a historic right to Sleswic, it is claimed. Since from the dawn of history down to 1864 Sleswic has