THE NORTH SLESWIC QUESTION 2g$
can such a struggle hope to hold the attention of a busy world ?
And yet, is there not in this very nature of the fight some- thing to appeal to all thinking people ? Is not this little army of Danes heroically struggling to maintain their nationality against the combined governmental and cultural forces of power- ful Germany entitled to the remembrance and sympathy of liberal America ?
During the first few years after 1864 the conquerors treated the alien population of the subjugated province with a fair degree of leniency. Through the instrumentality of Napoleon III., who since his Italian campaign was looked to in Europe as the foremost champion of the national principle, a clause had been inserted into the Treaty of Prague making the people of North Sleswic arbiters of their own fate. 1 Prince Bismarck, in a speech before the Prussian lower house in December, 1866 repeated later in the North German Reichstag with direct reference to Sleswic voiced his unqualified assent to this principle in the fol- lowing terms :
I have ever been of the opinion that a population which in indubitable manner and constantly evinces a determination not to be Prussian or German, but desires nationally to belong to an immediately adjacent state, does not add to the strength of the power from which it strives to separate itself.
And again in 1873, at a reception given by the prince then chancellor to members of the Reichstag, he addressed these words to the sole representative from North Sleswic, who had reminded him of the treaty rights of his constituents and the desirability of an early settlement: "Yes, you are right; I am entirely of your opinion. Persevere in your fight ! "
How much sincerity may be attributed to these utterances by the astute politician is perhaps open to doubt. In this "man of blood and iron" there was not lacking a vein of bloody irony, strangely contrasting with the almost brutal frankness so domi-
lU His majesty the emperor of Austria transfers to his majesty the king of Prussia all his .... claims to the duchies of Holstein and Sleswic, with the stipulation that the populations of the northern districts of Sleswic are to be ceded to Denmark, if they by a free vote manifest a desire to be united with Denmark" (Treaty of Prague, Art.V).
