Ten Years Near the German Frontier: A Retrospect and a Warning

A Retrospect and a Warning
Maurice Francis Egan Former United States Minister to Denmark
Hodder and Stoughton London · New York · Toronto
Copyright, 1918, By George H. Doran Company

The purpose of this book is to show the reflections of Prussian policy and activity in a little country which was indispensable to Prussia in the founding of the German Empire, and which, in spite of its heroic struggle in 1864, was forced to serve as the very foundation of that power; for, if Prussia had not unrighteously seized Slesvig, the Kiel Canal and the formation of the great German fleet would have been almost impossible.
The rape of Slesvig and the acquisition of Heligoland—that despised 'trouser button' which kept up the 'indispensables' of the German Navy—are facts that ought to illuminate, for those who would be wise, the past as a warning to the future. There is no doubt that the assimilation of Slesvig by Prussia led to the Franco-Prussian war, and liberated modern Germany from the difficulties that would have hampered her intention to become the dominant power in the world. The further acquisition of Denmark would have been only a question of time, had not the march of the Despot through Belgium aroused the civilised world to the reality of the German imperial aggression—until then, unhappily, not taken seriously. Had Germany followed the policy which induced her to hold Slesvig, in spite of the promise that the Slesvigers, passionately Danish, might by vote decide their own fate—and seize Denmark, the Virgin Islands, not American, would have been German possessions. The change of policy which sent the German army into Belgium and Northern France, instead of into Denmark, was, in a measure, due to the belief in Germany, that the war would be short; and, with France helpless, Russia terrorised and England torn by political factions, she could control the Danish Belts that lead from the North Sea to the Baltic and treat these waters as German lakes.