THE NORTH SLESWIC QUESTION 321
Could a more liberal, a more uniformly just, scheme have been devised ? Where else in the world, in countries of mixed races and languages, did then do now similar conditions prevail ? What other European nation has in modern times shown such toleration, such magnanimity, toward its foreign, hostile elements? Certainly not Germany. And yet Germans never tire of upbraiding Denmark and the Danes for what they did in Sleswic prior to 1864, which, they say, by the law of retribution, played the province into their hands to have and to hold !
IV. THE CULTURAL ARGUMENT.
It has always been a favorite theory with a large class of German expansionists that, the two cultures being essentially alike with the superiority rather on the side of the German once the Danes in North Sleswic made up their minds to bow to the inevitable and become Germans in speech and thought, they would find the transition comparatively easy and in every way to their advantage. The annexation of Sleswic being an accom- plished fact, they argue, and one not likely ever to be reversed, the population has everything to lose and nothing to gain by a continued clinging to their Danish traditions, when they might, with hardly any effort on their part, become sharers in the glories of Germany's greatness. To them the relation of Danish to German culture is very much the same as that of Dutch or Flem- ish a sort of offshoot or satellite, whose insistence upon sepa- rate maintenance is nothing but sheer folly.
This argument would not be without weight, provided the premises hold. Recent history has clearly demonstrated the existence of vast numbers of enlightened and liberal-thinking people the world over viewing with equanimity or open approba- tion the consequences of a war waged by a stronger against a weaker power, on the theory that the success of its arms would be in the interest of a broad civilization and to the ultimate benefit of the conquered nation itself. To others it would seem as if the prevailing sentiment, expressed "in indubitable manner and constantly" to quote Prince Bismarck of a given popu- lation ought at any time to decide its political dependence,
