[6] Dillon, The Inside History of the Peace Conference, p. 151.
[7] Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, pp. 30-32. M. Mantoux asserts that Mr. Keynes never attended a regular session of the Council of Four. London Times, February 14, 1920.
II
BELGIUM AND DENMARK
Our examination of the specific territorial problems of the Conference may most conveniently begin with the simplest, the frontier between Germany and Denmark. This had been established by force of arms when Schleswig was taken from Denmark in 1864, while a promise made in 1866 to consult the population had never been fulfilled. Only at the close of the World War did an opportunity come to fix the boundary in accordance with the will of the inhabitants. The duty of the Conference was to provide the means of giving effect to their desires.
The territory of the former duchy of Schleswig comprises the portion of the peninsula of Jutland lying between the Danish frontier on the north and the River Eider and the Kiel Canal on the south. Called by the Danes South Jutland (Sönderjylland), it is similar in most respects to Denmark, being chiefly agricultural, with a fishing population on the Frisian islands to the west and a considerable shipping industry in its principal town, Flensburg, a town of 63,000 at the head of the Flensburg fiord. The region has an area of 3385 square miles, and 474,355 inhabitants, not far from twice the extent and population of the state of Delaware. About one-third of the people speak Danish; these are chiefly in the northern portion of the province. The rest, save for an isolated group of Frisians on the west coast, speak German.
The earlier history of Schleswig would take us into the tangled history of the Schleswig-Holstein question, which is for present purposes unnecessary. Suffice it to say that, whatever the previous rights of the king of Denmark may have been, the attempt to unite the duchy of Schleswig fully to the kingdom of Denmark by the constitution of 1863 led in the following year to war with Austria and Prussia and to the defeat of Denmark, whose king, by the treaty of Vienna, renounced all rights over Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg. In 1866, at the conclusion of the war between Austria and Prussia, the treaty of Prague transferred the rights of Austria to the king of Prussia, with the reservation that the “inhabitants of North Schleswig shall be again reunited with Denmark if they should express such a desire in a vote freely given.” Nothing could be clearer, and nothing more ineffective, for the article was contained in a treaty between two powers neither of which had the slightest interest in the performance of the obligation. As a matter of fact, the provision had been suggested by Napoleon III, but the interested parties, Denmark and the inhabitants of the district, were not put in a position to secure its execution. Bismarck, who seems at first to have expected a referendum, maintained in 1867 that the people as Prussian subjects had no right to demand it, the only right to such a demand resting with the emperor of Austria. Prussia made no effort to put the article into effect, and in 1878 it was abrogated by agreement with Austria.
So, since 1864, Schleswig has been under Prussian rule, and since 1867 an integral part of the kingdom of Prussia. Once probably wholly Danish, it had been subject for centuries to penetration from the south, and by this time possessed a large German element which henceforth had the active support of the Prussian government. The history of the attempt to Germanize Schleswig is, on a smaller scale, much the same as the history of the Germanization of Prussian Poland. Efforts at replacement of the population by Germans had little success, but the spread of German culture and the suppression of Danish culture were everywhere steadily pushed. German was made compulsory in the schools, the courts, and the churches; Danish was put under the ban in public meetings and theatres; and the Danish press and Danish societies were subjected to various forms of persecution. Intercourse with Denmark was in various ways restricted or made difficult. Constant war was waged against the Danish flag, and even against dresses which displayed the red and white colors of Denmark. It was even said that the owner of a white dog was obliged to repaint his red kennel! The regular agents of Prussian policy were omnipresent: the police, the pastor, and the schoolmaster. The officers’ duty was chiefly negative, the suppression of Danish tendencies; the schoolmaster’s was more positive, to instil Germanism into the rising generation, partly by teaching only in the German language save for a small amount of religious instruction, partly by the well known propagandist methods of German history and patriotic songs. Thus all were compelled to sing, “Ich bin ein Preusse, will ein Preusse sein”; and if a little girl should say, “Ich bin kein Preusse, will kein Preusse sein,” she was whipped and sent home.
Inevitably the zone of German speech crept gradually northward. In some villages of central Schleswig which spoke only Danish half a century ago, it is said that the language has disappeared save among the very old. Still the process of Germanization was slow, and as time went on active resistance was organized in the three great societies of the Language Union, the School Union, and the Voters’ Union. Leaders found in Denmark the Danish education which was forbidden them at home, and kept alive a strong tradition of Danish speech and Danish sympathies. A local political party was maintained, and the Danish vote increased after 1886, although under the German gerrymander of 1867 it was still allowed to return only one member of the Reichstag, and that in the extreme north. Treasonable acts were in general avoided, but the hope of reunion with Denmark was never entirely lost.
The fortunes of the World War gave at first but little hope to the pro-Danish Schleswigers. They served in the German army up to their full capacity; probably, as is stated, their losses were proportionately greater than those among purely German troops. If they were not fighting their own kin and friends, like the soldiers of Alsace-Lorraine, they were at least fighting in another’s cause. Denmark, too, walked warily during the war, with the fate of other small nations ever before her eyes and the profits of German friendship dangled in front of her. It was no time for Schleswig to look for help in this quarter. With the armistice, matters took on a new aspect. Foreseeing that the Schleswig question would be raised at the peace table, Germany proposed a separate arrangement with Denmark, and it was some time before Denmark readjusted her policy to correspond to a world in which the victorious Allies were able to impose terms on a defeated Germany. Even then the readjustment was incomplete. Germany might become powerful again, and Denmark must beware, so many thought, of laying up vengeance for the future by acquiring territory which Germany might demand back. In many quarters there seemed to be genuine terror lest the Allies might impose territory and obligations upon an unwilling Denmark. A natural hesitation over absorbing alien elements was accompanied by a fear lest many new voters might upset the party balance in a small country. In determining the future of Schleswig, it appeared that the timidity of Denmark was to have its weight, as well as the hopes of the population. The Radical party, then in power, wished only limited accessions of population in the region of North Schleswig; while the Conservatives favored a more decided policy extending into southern Schleswig, though few went so far as to demand outright the ancient frontier of the Eider or even the old rampart of the Dannevirke.
No mention had been made of Schleswig in President Wilson’s Fourteen Points, but a just determination of the question was promised by him in a letter to certain Danish-Americans just after the armistice (November 21). Diplomatic conversations had indeed already begun, and February 21 the Danish government formally placed the matter before the Peace Conference in an exposé made to the Council of Ten by its minister in Paris, Chamberlain Bernhoft. It asked for a plebiscite as soon as possible in the region of unquestioned Danish speech north of a line stretching west from the head of the Flensburg fiord to the north of the island of Sylt in the North Sea, a line which had been demanded, November 17, 1918, by the North Schleswig Voters’ Union at Aabenraa. By February sentiment was ready to ask for a plebiscite also in a zone to the south, which included Flensburg and certain adjacent territory. In order that all possibilities of pressure might be removed, the evacuation of German troops and German higher officials was requested in a considerable strip of territory farther south.