December 4, 1943

This tactful behavior, however, did not save the Danes from the midnight aggression which they suffered in the midst of World War II. Once again the Germans showed they had not changed their spots. They were still the wild beasts of the prophecy inscribed on the church tower of Flensborg four hundred years ago. The Kiel Canal and the districts that command it consequently remained in German control. It should of course have been returned to the Danes from whom it was taken by right of conquest as was Alsace from the defeated French. The result of this shortsighted policy is glaringly apparent today. If, as many assumed in 1919, the Danes did not want to take on this responsibility unless a police force under the League of Nations was established, the canal should have been internationalized. I and a few others, notably M. Cambon, the French delegate, at the time were in favor of ousting the Germans from the canal but at the same time of repaying them the construction costs. One of the admirable features of this plan was that it would not have cost the civilized nations a penny nor would it have enriched the robbers by a farthing. It should have been credited, as M. Cambon suggested, to the Germans as a payment on the reparations account, perhaps the only substantial payment they were ever to make.

Another flagrant omission from the Treaty of Versailles was the fact that Heligoland remained in the possession of the Germans. It should be recalled that, as an appeasement gesture in the nineties of the last century, it was ceded to the Berlin government by Lord Salisbury. There was some talk at the time that the Hamburgers wished to make of this mist-ridden island an international bathing beach. It was a graceful gesture, but it failed signally of its purpose. Had His Lordship suffered from an uneasy conscience, the island should have been restored to the Danes from whom it was rudely taken about 1810 when the English admirals were on the prowl for desirable naval bases. Once in their possession, the island, sought as a bathing beach in which all trippers were to disport themselves, was converted by the Germans into a military zone, and in a very short time it became the Gibraltar of the North Sea.

According to the Treaty (1919) these fortifications were condemned and the island demilitarized. But was it? I do not know the answer to this one. The control commissions may have reported what was done, and the Great Powers who were pledged to see that the treaty was carried out may have told their agents not to bother them with their disturbing reports. I do know this was the reception that was given by them to many other reports demonstrating that military and naval clauses in the treaty were honored in the breach but not in observance. But one thing is crystal clear: demilitarized or in the full panoply of its armor, the lonely island jutting out into the North Sea and protecting the entrance to the canal and threatening the insular security of Britain was a great asset to the Germans when once again they went on the rampage. It is a safe harbor for the sinister submarines and the piratical cruisers which, in the early stages of the war, ravaged the seas where once, in war as in peace, civilized practices were observed. When the conference assembles that will terminate this war and prevent the possible outbreak of others in the years to come, it is to be hoped that the canal and the island fortress will be placed in safe hands and not filed away in the dormant files of the United Nations as “unfinished business.”

Today I am not alone in thinking that in the face of this and other problems presented at Paris we were infatuated with formulas and disregarded realities. It would have been wiser to have returned the Schleswig districts to their legitimate owners after cleansing them of the alien intruders. This would have entailed some hardship and a few, a very few, decent people would have suffered. But it is a solution, perhaps the only one, to the problem of mixed nationalities who cannot or will not live together as good neighbors. Today it is quite plain that, had this course been pursued, a more stable peace would have resulted than has followed upon the lame plebiscite.

Some thought at the time, and more are convinced now, that plebiscites do not always reveal true conditions and even less that they are an infallible corrective to domestic and international ills. A few days after the orderly proceedings in Schleswig, which I did not witness, I was informed by some observers who were present that the vote was not indicative of the thought and the real wishes of the electorate. Information came to me from sources I regarded as reliable and unprejudiced that many Germans, masquerading as Danes, voted in favor of the return of the districts where they were intruders so that they might escape the heavy taxes which the Weimar government would have to exact to meet the reparation bill and the other imposts which the new people would have to impose if they were to survive. It was also maintained that these Germans masquerading as Danes reserved to themselves the right to show their true colors when the favorable moment struck. No one who is at all conversant with what has happened in the disputed districts since the Prussians marched back in 1941 can deny that these gloomy prophecies were without foundation in fact.

The lesson is that plebiscites are prickly functions and do not always work out as they should. While in 1920 there may have been something “rotten in Denmark,” yet even with us, the traditional home of the free and fair election panacea, the results are often disappointing—even at times amazing. The crux of the difficulty seems to be that it is difficult for the voters to concentrate on the main issue and not to be diverted from it by side questions or by personal prejudices. Even with us and with an electorate which we admit is far above the average, here in the land where free and fair elections are sacrosanct, they have been known to result in a fiasco although the expression ‘in a national disgrace” would seem more fitting.

Let us look at what happened in our own fair land only a few months later in the same year. Let us recall the words with which, on Jackson Day (January 8, 1920), President Wilson, pointing out the anarchic conditions that prevailed throughout the world, called upon our people through the medium of a solemn referendum to take a stand for righteousness. His trumpet note was: “We must give the next election the form of a great and solemn referendum. A referendum as to the part the United States is to play in completing the settlement of the war and in the prevention in the future of such outrages as Germany attempted to perpetrate.”

How little heed was given to this solemn warning—this call to the plain path of duty! By overwhelming majorities the electorate voted for Mr. Harding, not knowing what he had in mind—little caring that, as was obvious, he had nothing in mind. The solemn referendum came to this ridiculous and distinctly discreditable conclusion because, for three years, the voters had been inconvenienced by war conditions—by what in those soft Arcadian days were regarded as hardships—and they turned out in millions to get away from what they had endured, to give the bewildered manikin who preached “a return to normalcy” an overwhelming majority.

Of course the false Danes, the true-blue Germans in Schleswig, were actuated by very different motives. Looking forward to the day when it would be safe for them to show their true colors, they avoided the immediate hardships they saw were awaiting them in the war-torn Reich. When the Prussians came back in 1941 they shouted with joy in many districts. It is true their days of jubilation have been few, but it must be confessed that these clandestine Nazis who masqueraded as true Danes have played a sad role in the army of occupation.