December 26, 1918

Pierre Quirielle and several other editors of the Temps took me this afternoon to a meeting of the Schleswig Danes in a salle of the Deux Magots where I found assembled all or nearly all the shepherds of the submerged nationalities. Steed, foreign editor of the London Times, was there and was enthusiastically acclaimed when he said that the failure of England in 1864 to prevent the annexation of Schleswig by Germany was directly responsible for the rape of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871. The first Danish speaker asserted that for a time his people had been confident that the great wrong done them by the Prussians would be righted, honorably and without the shedding of blood. “But after Alsace we knew we were in for a long wait, that only a European convulsion would free us.”

He was followed by another young Dane who was introduced as the unofficial envoy of the Schleswig-Holsteiners whose name it was not wise to disclose, his family being still in the clutches of the German invaders. “You must not blame us,” he protested, “for our neutral attitude during the hostilities. You should recognize how powerless we were, how close to the claws of the German Beast. Our hatred of him goes back to the Middle Ages and beyond. The legend and the prayer that was inscribed in those days on the golden arrow of the Flensborg Cathedral reads ‘Lord, protect us from the German Beast who would devour the world.’ That prayer was placed there more than three hundred years ago by a patriotic Dane. For long it was unheeded, but now all the world knows that these are true words.”

Another member of the committee insisted that language is not a true test of nationality. In his “circle” (neighborhood) he stated many people spoke German as their umgangssprache—their everyday speech—who were Danish in blood, in sentiment, and in aspirations. He went on to say: “The children are made to speak German by the carpetbag schoolteachers who are quartered on us, but whenever they can the children twist the words that are put into their mouths. They are commanded to sing

Ich bin ein Preuss
Bin froh ein Preuss su Sein.

But what they really say is

Ich bin kein Preuss
Bin froh kein Preuss su Sein.

He went on to say, “We were promised and indeed for a time received some protection for our language and our schools under Clause 5 of the Treaty of Prague, which Napoleon III insisted upon; but when he fell, and even before, it was ignored and the German wolves, false to their promises, as they always are, sought to devour us.”

Several Danes who had been pressed into the German Army now mounted the platform and told how at the earliest opportunity they had passed over to the French, how at first they had been regarded by the Germans with suspicion, which was natural, but how later they had been allowed to fight in the first-line trenches, a dangerous favor which, however, gave them the chance to escape their drillmasters.

The Danish minister to France presided and smiled approval at those who were the most outspoken in their denunciation of the imposed German regime. But for himself he never said a word. So when he called upon me for a few remarks, a message from America, I said I would follow his example—that I too had come to listen, to learn, not to talk.