The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-14 00:00:00

If we may on the information that reaches
us from Gerraany, tb e grand day appointed by the
Prussians for a migb ty effort against Dybbol is the
11th inst. They are now, agreeably to the same
authorities, workin g hard at their own trenches
and erecting their batteries, making ready for a
cannonade which ito silence the fire of the Danish
bastions. Eight days is a long time to wait, how-
ever, for people vrho have been for nearly a month
in daily expectation of an attack, and who have not
forgotten that find the 20th, then the 26th of Feb-
tuary had been with the same confidence named by i
those same German pP.pers as the days that were
to usher in the beF;in'aing of the end, and that both
these days and r)thers passed without one ounce of
gunpowder bei ag burnt, except in some of those
outpost skirir Ashes, in the wanton shooting of
&entries behind the bush, which may, perhaps, be
among the *.nevitable evils of war, but which cer-
tainly do not further its objects or hasten its termi-
nation.

With a view to avoid these deplorable encounters
the Danes have drawn in their outpost considerably
within the woods of Stenterup and Boffel, and, espe-
cially on the south, have fallen back close almost
to their line of fortification on the skirts of Dybbol-
hill. Towards the north, however, they still hold
Dybbol-village, stretching up as far as Ragebol.
Yesterday a large column of infantry, with two
field-pieces, marched from the latter place upon the
little wood which bears the name of Ragebol Skov,
drove the Prussians from its cover, and established
itself in the wood, with the determination to cut
it down, an operation which has by this time been
accomplished. The attack on the wood cost the
Danes four men wounded and an officer. After
levelling the wood with the ground the Danes will
probably again fall back on the almost adjoining
villages of Ragebol and Dybbol, having thus a clear
ground before them all round their outposts.
For people who are sent out to fight and who are
debarred from fighting, nothing is more natural
than to speculate upon the why and wherefore there
should be no fighting. There are some of the Danish
officers whom I see daily who have all this time
been very sceptical as to their own royal Government
on the one side, and those of Austria and Prussia
on the other, ever being really in earnest about this
outbreak of hostilities, to which the force of circum-
stances and the impatience of their subjects brought
them. " There was a power in Germany and a
power in Denmark," they think, " far greater than
that of the rulers who sat at the helm of the public
business. The Schleswig-Holstein question was a
point of honour to be settled by a mortal duel be-
tween the two nationalities. The Germans looked
upon the duchies as a rallying point for all their
aspirations after unity, liberty, and aggrandise-
ment; they sought in the vindication of claims

grounded upon musty charters and pedantic
quibbles a means of self-assertion and an op-
portunity for joint action. 'The Danes clung,
if not to Holstein, at least to Schleswig, with the
tenacity of despair, and thought that their very
existence was wound up with the possession of the
Eider frontier. The animosity of the dispute was
not to be allayed by the moral authority or by the
material strength of the respective Governments.
The two nations were rushing to war with or with-
out the consent of their rulers. To avoid being
dragged, these latter took, or pretended to take, the
lead in the warlike movement. By placing them-
selves in the van of the German armies, Austria and
Prussia snubbed the Bund, dumbfounded the
national unions, and floored their Angustenburg
idol. Denmark, on her own side, humoured the
proud feelings of her brave people, assumed a lofty

tone, and made a great show of her determination
to nail her flag to the ba3tions of the llannewerk ;

all this was mere make-believe. The Dannewerk
was given up after three days' skirmishing, a luck-
less General was made the scapegoat, and now a
new feint is made of a desperat3 defence of the
rhmparts of Dybbol and Frederieia. The Prus-
sians came up to those ramparts breathing fire and
vengeance; yet a month goes by and the contend-
ing parties stand face to face, as if spell-bound,
without exchanging one blow. It is a position of
affairs that no one clearly understands ; upon which,
therefore, every one deems himself authorized to put
the very worst conclusion. It seems evident that
there exists somewhere a disinclination to fight—
nay, a determination not to fight. Such is by no
means the disposition of the troops on either side ;
for the Dines, for their own part, are burning to
blot out any blemish which may cling to their
fair escutcheon in consequence of their loss of
the Dannewerk, and the Prussians are smarting
under the bitter consciousness that the fight at the
Dannewerk reflected no credit on their arms, and
that they have their honour to retrieve. What stays
the hands of the combatants in their own despite
is the deliberate act of Berlin, Vienna, and Copen-
hagen, where wily statesmen, flattering themselves
that their own turn has come, that they have re-
gained their ascendancy over those stormy factions
which had almost shaken the reins from their hands,
are now planning some compromise, patching up
some arrangement, in which it may be possible for
themselves, fur their people, and for the European
Powers to acquiesce, and in the meanwhile have
made up their minds that the mischief of war should
go no further, and that the armistice which they
dare not proclaim in words should, de /act°, be
observed on either side.
I deemed it my duty to submit to you the gloomy
and somewhat uncharitable surmises to which this
prolonged suspension of hostilities gives rise, and
which, truly, might engender a belief that the
Schleswig-Holstein war was a sham from beginning
to end. For my own part, as I thick the key to the
mystery is to be sought rather in the Cabinets of
Vie interested parties than at the head-quarters of

/he belligerents, I shall express no opinion of my

own on the subject, and shall limit my observations
to the fact that if the strong lines at Dybbol are at

at any time to become the ground for a decisive
struggle, that struggle will be all the bloodier and
more desperate the longer it is put off. I rode
yesterday along the whole line of the ten bastions,
spreading out like a fan on that triangular piece of
ground of which the Sonderborg bridges are the
apex. I had with me an English officer of high
rank who has made the science of military engi-
neering the pursuits of a whole life and who came
to inspect the works as an amateur, and the con-
clusion he came to after a careful survey was that
the Dybbol line is one of immense strength ; so
strong, indeed, as he expressed himself, that " the
Danes have only to shut the door and take the key
along with them, sure that their bastions would
take care of themselves by
• - the sheer advantage of
the ground." The
activity of the Danes in adding
strength to their stronghold exceeds all belief.
Besides forts and bastions they have during these
last few days erected a sufficient number of wooden
barracks to enable two or more regiments to encamp
outside the town, and right in the centre of the
position at Dybbol Mill, and so to be readydontany
emergency to support the regiments doing
the outposts. The same unwearied alacrity is
atis
shown by the Danes in the rearing of batteries
along the Sound. There are no less than 11 already
in a fair condition of defence, from those at Sonder-
borg Church and Slot, or castle, to those at the ex-
treme point at Arnkielsore. I visited most of them
today with the English officer above mentioned,'
and we were for a long time especially inspecting
the works which are going on at Ronhave and
Skorfogedhus, or Forester's-house, the two spots
where it is most likely the Germans may be induced
to try to throw a bridge across from the opposite
shore at Sandbjerg and Storeskov. The probabi-
lities of their making such an attempt, and, what is
of greater moment, of their carrying it to a success-
ful termination, seemed to my intelligent military
English friend very slight. The width of the Sound
at the above-named narrowest points is no less than
800 glen, or about 1,600 English feet, and the depth
of water in mid channel, where the current is very
strong, is 72 feet, Before the Prussians could dream
of throwing the bridge, they would have to silence
all the batteries on the Danish side, and besides, all
such gunboats US would not fail to attack them from
the Northern entrance to the Sound at Arnkielsore.