SLESVIG-HOLSTEIN.
[To 711E EDITOR OF l'HE " SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—My attention has just been called to your issue of March 20th, in which you say that the result of the voting in my old country, Slesvig, and my native town, Flensborg, where I lived with my father's regiment until driven out by the onrush of the Prussians and Austrians, which was made possible by Lord Palmerston's betrayal of us, and in which onrush I may per- haps add my only sister perished, shows that "the rest of Slesvig, including Flensborg, prefers to remain German" (my italics).
You must allow me to express my grief and amazement that your great journal, Denmark's staunch friend for decades, in the face of the innumerable telegrams published during the last weeks denouncing the innumerable frauds and unceasing intimidation by which these intruders in our old land have been suffered by the Allies to manipulate the voting exactly as they liked, should applaud the success of these crimes. What
has the Huns' "preference" to do with it? Are you, Den- mark's trusted friend, not in duty and honour bound to demand redeemed the betrayal in 1864 of (in your present Prime Minis- ter's words) ray "poor, defenceless little nation "; in the late Lord Salisbury's words, "that infamous stain on England's honour which time cannot efface "; for which Palmerston and Russell had only the now non-existing coward excuse of fear of Prussia—and to pin Mr. Lloyd George down to the solemn pledge he has repeatedly given us on behalf +A the Allies, last time on the floor of the House of Commons, on July 3rd last, in his great Peace oration, " to restore Slesvig-Holstein to the poor, defenceless little nation from which—the meanest of the Hohen- zollern frauds—it was robbed in 1864" Or do you deliberately desire that infamy for ever to remain on England's name, never to be wiped off?
Surely when you quite bona fide began advocating these
"plebiscites" by which we Danes are left open without any sort of defensible frontier against Germany, it was on the basis of (I) a League of Nations being formed to protect us, and (2) of Germany having first been changed into a peaceable and civilized country. Is it not then now, with that Wilsenian con- traption killed by America, and with Germany still in full barbarism, revolution, and chaos before your eyes, and with my childhood place, Kiel, Danish as much as Copenhagen from the dawn of ages, being blown to bits while I write, in your heart and conscience to part company from that by your own correspondents denounced Hun fraud and insist upon it being stopped? And (even if England's national honour and duty in this matter do not concern you) to give some thought to the fate of my "poor, defenceless, robbed little" kinsmen, wins after fifty-five years' dreadful slavery in the power of the bar- barians, were told by Mr. Lloyd George, on behalf of the Allies, that they would be released and given back to life and freedom and to their kin in Denmark, and who, pinning their faith to that solemn pledge of the Allies, and having made bold to show their patriotism, are now to be thrown back to unspeakable horrors, to the vengeance of" the murdering, pillaging, raping, foul Brandenburg wolves "P—I am quoting your friend President Wilson. If not, how are you going to protect them P Answer that.
Born in Flensborg and grown up in the old Danish towns,
Kiel, Rensborg, Slesvig, I have a right to appeal to your heart and your conscience, even if national honour is no concern of yours. Is there any honourable, or merely avowable, reason which could possibly in the present circumstances be put for- ward for your open advocacy of this faked "plebiscites" fraud, denounced all over the world this very day? Can you give me any case in history of a thief on trial who has been allowed to vote as to whether he shall keep his stolen goods?
When the Runs tried this now exploded trick, and asked for "plebiscites" in Alsace-Lorraine, did you agree to that? Did you advocate that there should be voting in Alsace-Lorraine? Why then in Slesvig?
You. may wonder at the assurance of a mere unit of the " poor, defenceless little nation" in question to address you these per- tinent questions, with a demand for an answer. My first reason is that if you persist in yonr attitude, you, with your tremendous power in this country, will more than any other public Wear in. the Empire he responsible for the destruction of the old Danish race, which stood sentinel for liberty and for your own Empire's security for a thousand years; for, in Lord Salisbury's prophetic warning in 1864, "Denmark's strength is England's security."
But I have an additional right to have this protest published by you apart from being a representative of the remnant of untainted Danish blood still surviving, and that is my publicly acknowledged services to your Empire and to civilization. generally, services which I have never before mentioned myself, but which by your statesmen and in the world's Press have been repeatedly acknowledged as having saved us all from Hun domination years ago, services not only acknowledged all over the world, but which, in a great English writer's words (in 1917), "have been formally tested and declared thoroughly valid by an illustrious English leading counsel, who is also world-famous in the political arena "—namely, the Right Hon. H. H. Asquith—by your own ex-Prime Minister.—I am, Sir. Ace
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