Face to Face with Kaiserism

by James W. Gerard

The people of these three countries are of the same blood and their languages are somewhat similar. Norwegian and Danish written are practically the same. But there is quite a difference in pronunciation. Swedish is more like German and the pronunciation is not as difficult to learn as that of Norwegian and Danish. In Norway, there are older dialects, differing from Danish, and there has lately been a great movement in favour of a more national language. Many Norwegians regard the official Danish-Norwegian as a reminder of old subjection to Denmark and not at all fitted for the new independent Norwegian kingdom. The new national language is called "Landsmaal."

Sweden and Norway were both under one king from 1814 to 1905. In that year after a peaceful secession, Prince Charles of Denmark, the son of the King of Denmark, was made the King of Norway, with the title of Haakon VII. Although both have kings, Denmark and Norway may be termed democratic countries.

Copenhagen is lively since the war. The population of Denmark is only 2,500,000 and the whole country is only 14,829 square miles, which means an area about the size of Maryland. The country was once larger but in 1864 Prussia went to war with Denmark and, finally, after the war with Austria in 1866, added to the Crown of Prussia the two Danish duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. As the city and port of Kiel were included in this territory annexed, it is easy to see why the Germans engaged in this enterprise against Denmark.

Denmark possesses the Faro Islands which lie far to north of Scotland, the great island of Iceland and Greenland, relics of the times when the Viking ships brought such terror to the other countries of Europe, that the Litany used to read: "From plague, pestilence and famine, from battle and murder, from sudden death and from the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us."

In Christiania we saw on our trip out two graceful Viking ships dug out of the clay shores of the coast in a state of fair preservation—one of them a Princess's ship on which it was easy to imagine some blonde princess of the North, her long braids of golden hair flying in the wind, urging on her Scandinavian oarsmen.

The Danes are a sturdy race, the women more independent than those of other countries. On the Frederick VIII, when we sailed from Denmark, September 28, 1916, for the United States, were two handsome girls, nineteen and twenty-one years of age, the daughters of the proprietor of the largest department store in Copenhagen. They were going to America to find employment in department stores in the different cities of the country, travelling entirely alone, and expected to return to Denmark after a year's experience in America with many new ideas of management and advertising for their father in Copenhagen. These girls were wonderfully educated, speaking in addition to Danish, French, German and English with hardly a trace of accent. They lived a short distance out of Copenhagen and told me that every morning of the year they jumped into the sea at six-thirty in the morning, something that I should not care to do even in August in that cold northern land.

Danish farmers learned early that in order to be prosperous they must practise intensive farming. I believe that Denmark, which even before the war enjoyed a high degree of prosperity, is the only country in the world where there are pig sties steam-heated and electric lighted while the farmer himself does not have these luxuries.

Our farmers have much to learn from the farmers of Denmark both in agricultural methods and in co-operation for the marketing of products. The reclamation of the Danish moors in Jutland has made surprising progress: it is in Jutland that a park has been preserved in its primeval state—the Danish-American Park, bought with money subscribed by Danish emigrants to America who prospered in their adopted land.

Ever since the conquest of Denmark by Germany, there has been a deep hatred of all things German in Denmark on account of the treatment of those Danes, numbering between one hundred and two hundred thousand, who were living in Schleswig and Holstein and were unfortunate enough to be turned over as property to the King of Prussia.

I found the Danes agreeable people. Of the same race as the Germans, living like them in the dark North, this difference in behaviour is perhaps accounted for by the fact that the Danes are free, while the Germans are oppressed by the weight of an ever present autocracy.