The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-23 00:00:00

The Vienna Conferences.

A letter from Dresden, dated Sept. 19, says :—Those
statesmen who undertook to put the screw upon Denmark
at Vienna begin to find out that they have on hand a far
more arduous task than they anticipated. By bringing the
♦anquished little Northern Power to sign the preliminaries
of peace, they merely took the horse to the water. " A
chlid," says the proverb, can achieve that much, but it is
more than many men can do to get him to drink." Loud
complaints arise throughout Germany that " Dcnmarl is
untractable." They have taken her to the wood, where
it was understood she was to make ready for execution;
they show her one tree after another, but the stubborn thing
will not point out the one on which she may cone ent to be

hanged.
From the very earliest outbreak of the war Denmark well
knew that the German Powers had her at their discretion,
unless Providence raised some mighty ally to her support.
She fought against odds, she treated on unequal terms;
so long as she could, she hoped against hope. She gave in
at last, when she saw herself forsaken ; but it takes a good
deal to kill hope in the heart of man ; it takes even more to
guard against its revival. It was only in obedience to the
stern law of necessity that Denmark was brought to sign
these preliminaries; her hand, but not her will consented.
She will not abide by that compact upon the least chance of
a removal of the pressure. The very exorbitance of the terms
imposed, the unfair interpretation put upon these prelimi-
nary articles, she fancies, ought to rouse heaven and earth
to her rescue. If she can only gain time, she flatters her-
self something is sure to turn up. A worse fate than is now
impending can hardly befall her on any emergency. NV hen
all is lost, what more can be taken from her ? She has
signed away the Duchies ; Jutland is being drained to its
last drop of blood. Suppose she never again puts pen to
paper, what then P The Duchies cannot twice be lost, nor
can Jutland be bled over and over again. The armistice
must needs be indefinitely prolonged; a renewal et hostili-
ties is also absurdly out of the question. Should even the
question be again referred to the arbitrament of arms, war
would now have to be carried on upon that element on
which she is as yet unconquered. The Germane, in fact,
only grumbled at the bare possibility of matters continuing
in their present state of uncertainty until spring, when their
commerce would once more be exposed to the attacks lel the
Danish cruisers. They are, therefore, loudly calling upon
Denmark to "come down and execute herso.t." But the
greater their haste the stronger ber determination to gain
as much as she can by delay. She ekes out the half-quar-
ter of an hour that she has been allowed to prepare for her
fate, and, in the meanwhile, she inquires in a voice of
anguish for "any one that may be coming."
The King of Danmark, it begins now to be found out,
gave up more at the -Vienna preliminaries then a King
has a right to part with at the present day. The Danes of
North-Schleswig are men, and. they obj^,ct to be handed

from one owner to another like sheep. There is one prin.
ciple in the modern theory of nationality which cannot be
set asido. Every people, large and small, has a most sacred
right to be heard, whenever any change is to occur about
its destinies. Granted, that whatever is is for the best, and
let the question of race or language never become the pre-
text for war or revJlution—whether the Alsatians be French
or Germans—whether Posen should belong to Prussia or
Poland—it would be to little purpose to inquire. Those
people acquiesce in their present lot, and quitta non moverc
is the best of policies. Upon that ground, nothing could
have been more unwise than to stir the question of na-

tionality in Schleswig-Holstein, so long as the inhabitants
of that territory lived peacefully under the Danish sway.
The Germans, however, nave invoked the national prin-
ciple in behalf of their Schleswig-Holstein brethren, and as,
upon the invasion of the Duchies, a part of the population
have raised their voice for separation from Denmark, the
latter Power has been compelled to resign its sovereign
rights upon them. But even admitting that emancipation
from Denmark was, indeed, the settled wish of the majo-
rity of the German population of the Duchies, admitting
that Germany had a right to elicit that wish by a hostile
invasion, and that the result of military occupation has
been to establish the principle of nationality on the clearest
basis, in the most legal way, and to its full extent in the
revolutionized districts—it is difficult to see on what ground
the Germans can insist upon trampling on the national
rights of the North-Schleswig Danes, or on what ground
these latter can be severed from their brethren of Jutland,
Fuen, and Zealand against their own inclination, and
simply because their King has been driven by ovcrwh lin-
ing force to dispcse of them as ho had not the slightest
shade of a right to do.
The cession of 200,000 people may be in conformity with
the old notions about the sacred rights of Sovereigns ; it
may be consistent with the law of conquest; but certainly
it is not in union with that principle of nationality upon
which the Germans have hitherto pretended to act.
It is upon this ground that the people of North Schleswig
are now petitioning, when they would be fully entitled to
protest, against that article in the preliminaries to peace
which aims at denationalising them. What power had
the King to sign away their birthright F On what plea
would the Germans claim them? Simply because they
are a small flock, and cannot hold their own against two
colossal Powers. But who ever limited the size and num-
bers within which a people may claim the mastery over its
destinies If 200,000 human beings are, in spite of all their
protests, to be treated like mere cattle, simply because they
have not the strength of 30,000,000 or 40,000,000, why
should the German Schleswigers, who do not far outnum-
ber the Danish Schleswigers, have their rights not only
acknowledged, but even vindicated and enforced, before
they had given them utterance ?
Decidedly the Germans will find it diflacult to apply two
weights and two measures in Schleswig Holstein. " Who
are these men," they say, "who presume to appear before
the King at Copenhagen as representatives of their fellow-
citizens? Where do they come from? Who sent them?
Whence dial they receive their powers to act as a deputa-
tion ? How came such a mere handful of men to speak in
the name of 200,001 people ?
It is well, indeed, that the Germans should put such
questions. When Denmark ruled over her own lands as
far as the Elbe, and the Duchies, to all appearance, enjoyed
the greatest peace and prosperity, who were the men who
set up as representatives of the Schleswig-Ilolsteiners ; who
trumpeted forth the grievances of an oppressed nationality ;
who called upon the whole of Vaterland to rescue an en-
slaved German tribe from the galling Danish yoke? How
were deputations got up at Schleswig or Flensburg ?
Whence did the patriots who came to do homage to the
Prince of Augustenburg, in their countrymen's name, re-
ceive their mission ? Alas I it is difficult, in the quietest
times, by the fairest means, to get at the real wishes of a
people; but it is always too easy for a few irresponsible ad-
venturers, for a few unprincipled demagogues, to identify
themselves with the inert mass, and to pretend to speak in
its name. The argument, surely, cuts both ways. The
real fact is that a fair, constitutional appeal to the Schles-
wig Holeteiners was never made before or after the war.
The occupation of the Austro-Prussians renders such an
experiment utterly impossible at the present time. Those
deputies who have appeared before the King of Denmark
have shown a civil courage which few of their fellow
citizens will have a chance to imitate, since the military au-
thorities at A penrade, have signified to the inhabitants, by
an order dated the 17th inst., that " they will allow no peti-
tions to be laid out for signature in districts that are still
subject to martial law."
So long as there is any one in Enropo who has an inte-
rest in upholding the principle of popular suffraEe,the
Danish Schleswigers have a right to be heard, and the King
of Denmark has a chance of being countenanced in his re-
fusal to ratify that chat article of the rrelituinaries
which
was wrung from him by
h t
accept-
ance of which ho evidently exceeded e violence,
n c hisand
powers.in
the
l\l y be,
e,
the new hopes which Denmark builde on the Emperor s eee
Na-
poleon are doomed to be as fallacious as any of those which
have led hitherto from disappointment to disappointment.
But one cannot help sympathising with the poor vanquished
State in her endeavours to pat off the evil hour. One can-
not help feeling for her, if, at every intimation that she
should " come down and be killed," she sets up her feeble
cry—" Sister Anne 1 Sister Anne I Do you sco any one
coming?"