The commission to which the Conference referred the Schleswig problem heard delegates from the different parts of the territory, as well as reports of the various points of view in Denmark. The commission saw no reason why the right of voting should be refused to any part of the region to be evacuated, though it was plain that some judgment would need to be used in drawing a frontier upon the basis of the voting, so as to avoid enclaves and inconvenient meanderings. Definite evidence was before it of a desire to vote on the part of many persons in south Schleswig. Accordingly its report, incorporated in the draft treaty submitted to the Germans in May, provided for a plebiscite by three zones, so that the frontier between Germany and Denmark might be fixed in conformity with the wishes of the population. In the first or northernmost zone, where the voting was supposed to be largely a matter of form, the plebiscite was to take place for the whole district within three weeks of the German evacuation. In the second zone of mixed speech in middle Schleswig, where opinion was likely to vary in different districts and to be affected somewhat by the result in the first zone, the voting was to occur not more than five weeks later and to be taken commune by commune. The same method was to be applied two weeks thereafter in the third zone, which comprised the remainder of the evacuated territory extending to the Eider and the Schlei, a region of predominantly German speech, where the Danish tradition had been greatly weakened in course of time and where the people would likewise want to know the result in the neighboring zone to the northward. Within ten days of the coming into force of the treaty German troops and higher officials were to evacuate the whole territory north of the Eider and the Schlei, and the administration was to be carried on by an International Commission of five, one appointed by Norway, one by Sweden, and three by the Allied and Associated Powers. This commission was to hold the plebiscites in accordance with provisions which had been suggested by the Danish government; and upon the result of the voting, with due regard to geographic and economic conditions, recommend a permanent boundary to the Allied and Associated Powers. The whole plan was carefully drawn to secure as full and free an expression as possible of the desires of the population.
Opposition came from two sources. The German criticisms, as handed in to the Conference in May, had little weight. They proposed to limit the voting, and hence any possible loss of German territory, to a portion of the first zone, on the ground that only there did more than half of the population speak Danish. Apart from the fact that this affirmation was based on the official language statistics of the Prussian census, which was notoriously unfavorable to non-German elements, the proposal started from two inadmissible assumptions: one that language is the sole test of political sympathy; the other that no region where Germans were in a majority should be allowed self-determination, for, it was implicitly believed, no German could possibly want to leave the Fatherland. Germany thus sought to prevent free expression of opinion where it might turn to Germany’s disadvantage, at the very moment she clamored for it in Upper Silesia, where it might possibly turn out in her favor. How Germany hoped to control the plebiscite appeared from another proposal, namely that, all German officials still remaining in the country, the administration and the voting should be in charge of a commission of Germans and Danes, with a Swedish chairman!
The Danish objection, as voiced by the majority Radicals, was against the inclusion of the third zone in the voting. The reason most generally given was that districts in this zone might vote for Denmark from purely economic motives, especially the desire to escape German war taxes and war indemnities, and thus form an irredentist minority in a country with which they were not really in sympathy. Probably also there was still the lurking fear of the powerful neighbor of the past and the future, as well as some measure of friendliness for the new regime in Germany.
To such arguments the Conference yielded, cutting out of the final treaty the plebiscite in the third zone and its evacuation as well. The change was made at the last moment, without readjustment of the other provisions, so that this section of the treaty shows certain signs of haste. The effect was to take away all opportunity for self-determination in the third zone and to leave the German troops and administration here in a position to exert pressure on the region to the northward.[8]
The vote in the first zone, held February 10, 1920, resulted in a decisive Danish majority of three to one, and led to occupation by Denmark, as the treaty had provided. Feeling ran high in the second zone, where the German government sought to influence the decision by threats in the Reichstag; the struggle centred around Flensburg, certain in either event to be a frontier town now that the third zone had been eliminated. The plebiscite, held March 14, resulted decisively for Germany, the vote in Flensburg being overwhelming and only a few scattered villages on the islands voting for Denmark. The result failed to satisfy either party entirely, a large Danish group still wanting Flensburg, while in the first zone the Germans wished to recover Tönder, where the voting had favored Germany. Indeed it remains to be seen whether German hopes of recovery will be limited to Tönder.
One question of which Denmark and the Schleswigers showed great desire to keep clear was the Kiel Canal. Even the widest limit of evacuation proposed carefully left a belt of Schleswig territory between its southern border and the canal, lest what was fundamentally a question of popular rights might become complicated with a wholly distinct international problem. Only in case of the internationalization of the canal would its fate have reacted on the Schleswig problem by leaving an isolated strip of German territory to the north which might then have been separated from Germany and attached to the adjacent Danish territory. Whatever might have been said for the internationalization of this great waterway, the question was not seriously considered at the Conference. The parallel to Suez and Panama was too close! The treaty leaves the canal under German control, but provides that it shall be open on terms of entire equality to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations at peace with Germany.[9]
The island of Heligoland, which England had seized from Denmark in 1807 and ceded to Germany in exchange for Zanzibar in 1890, is not restored to either of its former owners. Instead it is stipulated that all fortifications and harbor works there shall be destroyed by German labor and at Germany’s expense, and that no similar works shall be constructed in the future.[10] Immunity for the future might do something to offset the great price which England had paid for Zanzibar throughout the World War.
The case of Belgium at the Peace Conference was widely different from that of Denmark. Denmark had remained neutral; her neutrality had been respected by others, and had even been a source of commercial profit; and at the end of the war, without the slightest effort on her part, she saw all her desires gratified in Schleswig. Indeed, her only fear was lest she should receive more territory than she wanted. The neutrality of Belgium, specially guaranteed by an international treaty, and thus far more binding on her neighbors than that of Denmark, had been violated by Germany at the very outbreak of the war. Belgium had suffered more than four years of German occupation, including the systematic spoliation of her farms, her factories, and her railroads, and the deliberate attempt to divide her people into two separate Walloon and Flemish states; she had barely escaped permanent incorporation with Germany. Yet all this time she had fought as best she could beside the Allies; she had made heavy sacrifices; she had stood for international right. Belgium expected much from the peace, and Belgium was in large measure disappointed.
Belgium was disappointed on the economic side, for she was flooded with depreciated German currency which the Allies did not take over, and her hopes for full priority on the account of restoration and reparation were not entirely fulfilled. Indeed, it soon became apparent that the general bill for reparation would far exceed the ability of Germany to pay, and that there were not resources enough in all Germany to meet that restoration of invaded territory upon which President Wilson had declared “the whole world was agreed.” Belgium had suffered less than France by the destruction of war itself, for her territory, save in the case of the Meuse fortresses and the battle zone in Flanders, had not been fought over; but the German occupation which she had borne in equal measure was relatively far more serious, for it affected the whole country and not merely a part, and it produced stagnation of industry and cessation of commerce on a scale that destroyed enterprise and left idleness as well as poverty in its stead.
In territorial matters Belgium’s desires, save for a small correction of the German frontier, concerned neutral powers, Holland and Luxemburg, which were not members of the Peace Conference and not subject to its jurisdiction. The most that the Conference could do was to help in the adjustment of Belgium’s claims, and Belgium feels strongly that the Conference did not help enough.