Let us see what happened in Slesvig. Since '64, Prussia has governed Slesvig. This rule has been a prolonged and constant attempt to force the Danes from their homes. A very distinguished and rather liberal German diplomatist, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, once asked me, 'As an American, tell me frankly what is wrong with our position in Slesvig?'
'Everything,' I said. 'You seem even to assume that the religion of the people should be the religion of the state.'
'The state religion in Slesvig is as the state religion in Denmark, Lutheranism.'
'But not Germanised Lutheranism. I have the testimony of a Lutheran pastor himself, the Reverend D. Troensegaard-Hansen, to the effect that the authorities in Slesvig prefer German materialistic teaching to Danish Christianity, and that all kinds of influence is brought to bear on the clergy to make them German in their point of view. If, in the Philippines, we attempted to do the things you do in Slesvig, there would be no end of trouble.'
He laughed. 'But democrats as you are, you will never keep your promise to grant those people self-government.'
'We will.'
'Your democracy is not statesmanlike. It would be fatal for us to let the Slesvigers defy our power. They must be part of Germany; there is no way out.'
'Either you want difficulties with them or you are worrying them just as a great mastiff worries a small dog.'
'But suddenly a gymnast raises the Danish flag, or somebody utters a seditious speech in Danish, or school books are circulated in which ultra-Danish views of history are given. If a country is to be ruled by us, it must be a German country. We can tolerate no difference that tends to denationalise our population. It is a dream—the Danish idea that we shall give up what we have taken or, rather, what has been ceded to us.'
'Without the consent of the people?'