TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CONQUEST OF DENMARK.
PATRIOTISM and valour, heroism and self-sacrifice have all alike failed to stop the bullets, and the military tyrannies of Germany are masters of the half of Schleswig. General de Meza, the Jew soldier in chief command of the Danish army, finding that the Prussians could cross the Schlei, that the Dannewerke was thereby turned, and that if he re- mained his army would be forced either to accept battle against twofold numbers or to capitulate, preferred to with- draw, and, sharply pursued by the enemy, retreated upon Flensburg, whence the major portion of the army crossed into the district of Schleswig, called from the arm of the sea which separates it from the mainland the Island of Alsen. The Danes fought in their retreat with despairing courage, defending hedge after hedge. The people of Flensburg defended their barricades till they had killed a thousand Germans; and at Oversee, when utterly outmatched, a Danish regi- ment flung itself upon the Austrian batteries, and, though almost destroyed itself, saved the remainder of the army. It is all useless, for "the rain descends alike on the just and the un- just," no moral superiority counterbalances bayonets, and Eng- land does not seem even to feel the grandeur of the effort the hope of her support has tempted brave men to make. The Germans, flushed with their victory have, to prove their respect for the Treaty of 1852, already " suspended" the Danish Government, and to show their devotion to justice and nation- ality have ordered that Danes as well as Germans shall use the German tongue. The people north of Flensburg are still ready to die for their country ; but the people south of that point are allowed to speak for both, and to proclaim Prince Frederick as Duke alike of the willing and the un- willing population. All Danes within reach of the Hun- garians, Croats, Shwas, Italians, and Austrians, who make up what Vienna calls a German army, are expelled, Germans who think freedom worth as much as nationality are com- pelled to follow them, and hundreds of quiet families guilty of loyalty to an English treaty are wandering northwards in this bitter weather, without home or shelter or goal, cursing, we fear, the sympathies which induced them to be- lieve that England, even when not bound down by a lawyer's contract, could still be relied on to help freemen against violent wrong. The Danes, it is believed, will still, with the persistence of their Scandinavian blood, maintain the contest, harassing the invaders from Alsen, and by sea, until events once more turn, but there is no real ground of hope ; forty millions of people in earnest are not to be resisted by less than two, however individually superior, and the Germans are in earnest. They are enjoying the threefold luxury of seeing that when combined for evil they are strong, of hoping that one day they may be powerful also for good, and of insulting the power whose political freedom is a standing reproach to a people who desiring liberty and unity are still the meek subjects of thirty princelings, and they will quaff the cup to the bottom. Why not ? God is far off, and Eng- land afraid of Napoleon, and the world for the moment is theirs to do what they will,—to destroy Denmark if they like, in order that Prussian recruits may become veterans, and that Hapsburg may not outstrip Hohenzollern in the race for the hegemony. What matters if a treaty is broken when the judges are afraid to enforce it, that every little nation in Europe is thrown open defenceless to the assaults of its neighbours, that a nation is dying as some queenly woman might die if assailed by wolves, that every honourable heart in Great Britain is beating slower for shame at the spectacle of triumphant wrong ? Are not the victors Germans, and are they not the ruling race of earth, the only one from which the world picks kings,—competent for any- thing except freedom and fidelity ? It is useless, however, with Tories hungering for a surplus, and Liberals thirsting to show the world that England means peace even when peace is humiliation, to write about treaties, and honour, and nationalities, and " abstract ideas " of that kind. The only argument which comes home in the present temper of the aristocratic mind is interest, and we ask them just to consider for a moment whether apathetic indecision is in this matter their true interest? Are they really prepared to allow two great Powers to tear a province from a little Power because a section of the inhabitants of the province speak the same language as one-half of the two aggressive populations do ? Because, if they are, we want to know on what principle they intend to fight for the Channel Islands, or the Mauritius, or Gibraltar, or any one of the thirty depen- dencies of Great Britain in which English is not universally spoken. That Germany intends to keep the Duchies is, we hold, certain, and to keep them upon the ground of national consanguinity. Those Powers have been driven to the war which qua war they did not desire by the pressure of German feeling, which feeling has been intensified by every military success, and will most certainly not permit them to surrender the long-desired prize. The Courts have been from the first unable to resist the commands of the excited democracy of Germany, and nothing has occurred in the war to strengthen their power over their peoples' passions. If they yield to them they are safe, and except their own safety what have they to consult? There is the Treaty of 1852, but the Hohenzollerns have just violated a contract of at least equal validity, hi. Bismark writes openly that a quarrel with Smith dissolves all contracts with Jones, and the Hapsburgs have broken every engagement they ever made, unless, indeed, it bound them to make priests a little stronger. There is France, but Germany united thinks herself a match for France, sings in her spasm of energy songs about wringing " Elsass " from the stranger, and doubtless were France only as weak as Denmark would try to execute her threat. There is England, but Germany repeats with sneering gusto that. Earl Russell's threats are wind ; that England fights only when her interests are imperilled, and that national dignity is not in England considered an interest. The two Powers can break the Treaty, and they will, if only it is clear that breaking it will pay ; and with provinces to acquire, a demo- cracy to conciliate, a weak foe to outrage, and only England to insult, who can doubt that the profit is secure ? There will be, of course, negotiations, for German pro- fessors love to prove rights on paper ; there will probably be half-a-dozen subterfuges, for a plain appeal to the sabre might bring a flash into England's sleepy eyes ; there will, doubtless, be a popular vote, for, as Jules Fevre said, modern creeds require us to search the victim's entrails for favourable auguries ; but when all these things are done Denmark will have lost Schleswig, and a nationality older than our own will be left without resource save that one which seems pleasant only to Buddhists, absorption in something greater than oneself. Is it our interest to allow this example of successful violence to tempt France to seize the Rhine, and Russia the frontier of the Balkan ? Resisting either of those two aggressions would cost us rather more than sending a fleet to Venice and an expedition into Jutland, yet those are the ultimate dangers which we risk in order to avoid the possibility of the first of them. We may avert them, say some Radicals, by steadily refusing to mingle in any Conti- nental affair, as, indeed, it is possible* to avoid trouble when the next house is on fire by calmly going to bed. That is non-intervention in perfection ; but then there is risk in that course as well as cowardly neglect of duty. Fortunately there is not the smallest fear of Englishmen forgetting that dignity is at least an element in comfort, or holding that human beings are to them mere objects of scientific interest, or consenting to live as members of a family scorned by all the families with which it must per force associate. Short of a policy of selfish isolation, of watching crime with a sensation of amusement, it is surely the interest of Great Britain that her friendship should have some value, and her enmity some importance, that her vote for peace and freedom should weigh even with armed despots, that her " opinion" should be something more than the shout of an educated mob. Yet that is the position to which we are reduced if the governing class insists that we have done all that friendship can ask for Denmark, because, forsooth ! we have suggested a conference—have recommended chloroform in order to make amputation easy.
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