The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-19 00:00:00

about half a mile's distance in the Sound.

The most interesting of all strangers, however,are
the Swedish and Norwegian auxiliaries, chiefly land
and sea officers, eager to evince their sympathy in be-
half of the Scandinavian nationality, by placing
their swords, and giving their lives, if need be, in

the service of Denmark. The authorities at head-
quarters, penetrated as they are with their sense of
gratitude for this fine exhibition of brotherly devo-
tion, are very much at a loss how to turn these
natural allies to any practical use, or, indeed, how
to dispose of them. They are all officers of high

rank, officers and gentlemen ; must be treated as
honoured gaests, must be supplied with good guar•
ters, bed and board—all conveniences not easily to

be come by here on any terms; must be mounted on
good horses, and taken the whole round of the
sights of the camp; yet they bring to the Danish
cause nothing whatever besides their epaulettes and
their good swords.
It is not a score or two of majors and colonels
that Denmark is in need of. Indeed, any officer
above the rank of a lieutenant can be put to no
immediate use, ignorant as he must needs be of
the peculiarities of the drill, of the discipline, and,
to some extent, also of the language of the soldiers
he would have under his orders. It is not officers,
but soldiers, that Sweden should send, and these
not by scores or hundreds, but by many more
thousands than the whole great Scandinavian
peninsula can afford. The time was when not only
Sweden, but many other European Powers, by
merely lifting up a little finger, could not only
have saved Denmark, but also have averted the

evils of a war, of which we have seen the com-
mencement, but cannot easily foresee the end.
" Had the fleet of any great maritime nation made
its appearance in Kiel harbour only two months
ago, or had it cruised before the mouths of the Elbe
or the Oder," the Danes say, " it is very question-
able whether the Austro-Prussians would even have
dreamt of venturing across the Eider; and had
20,000 or 25,000 men joined the little army muster-
ing behind the bastions of the Dannewerk, those
who crossed that old frontier of the Roman or
German empire,' might have been glad to retrace
their steps, foiled and broken before that very
formidable barrier.' Twenty - five thousand
men, or even twice that number, would not now
enable the Danes to take the field with any great
hope of regaining their ground against the terrific
odds that United Germany has it always in her
power to concentrate against them. To resume
the offensive in the Cimbrian peninsula would be the
work of a first-rate power only, and the sympathy
of the Swedes, were it even to take the shape of the
largest contingent, would produce no general and
permanent effect. As the Danes have nothing of
moment to expect from the S wedea they have greatly
abated in their enthusiasm for these their natural
auxiliaries, and the dreams of the so-called Scandi-
navian party have been in a great measure dispelled
by the chilling reality. Indeed, although many of
the highest classes in both countries se battent les
'lanes pow se (loter de l'enthousiasme, or, in other
words, rave a great deal about this instinct of union
of the people of the three Northern kingdoms, there
seems to be but little attractive tendency in the
masses, and little love lost between them. The tradi-
tions of mutual wrongs and misdeeds, the remem-
brance of atrocious acts of tyranny exercised by
Denmark in Sweden, and the turns of bad neigh-
bourhood of Sweden towards Denmark, are still
green in the memcry of the lowest ranks of either
country ; and deep-rooted prejudices, illiberal anti-
pathies—those ill feelings which are apt to be par-
ticularly envenomed by too close a neighbourhood
and by ties of kindred, would raise, as it seems to
me, very strong obstacles in the way of the much
cherished scheme of a great Scandinavian empire,
Anyhow, in the present straits of Denmark, it is felt
that very little Efficient aid is to be hoped from
Sweden, even in the opinion of those who give her
credit for the strongest inclination to lend it if it
were in her power, even of those who raise to the
skies the high spirit of her chivalrous King, and
who are so sure that both Charles XV. and the whole
of his people would be but too ready to shed the
last drop of their blood for the Danes, were they
not hindered by a selfish Conservative party at
home, and by the trammels of a cold-hearted diplo-
macy abroad.
Nor is the reliance of the Danes on those mighty
Powers who really could bring relief any longer
very firm or sanguine. As they suppose that
Sweden is held in check by France, so do they
believe that England also is hampered in her
movements by her suspicions of France. Their
fate and the fate of the world, they think, hangs
on the good pleasure of that silent, nefathosnable
potentate wio is so slow in making up his mind,
and so quick in changing it ; and unless God so takes
pity on them as to throw discord into the councils
of their German enemies and to array them one
against another, and make either or both the easy
prey of France, they feel that further resistance,
however necessary to their honour, will hardly be
conducive to their interests ; that they are not only
doomed ultimately to fall, but also to be utterly
ruined and beggared in their fall. The feeling of
isolation, of the desertion of their cause by all the
mighty of the earth, the consciousness of their appal•
ling inferiority of numbers, begic, I think, to exercise
their depressing influence even upon the common sol-
diers of this brave, patient, but tried Danish army.
Inaction, or at least dreary and plodding and, to all
appearance, purposeless work, wears out a soldier's
spirits more than any amount of toil and danger
encountered in active warfare. The Danish soldiers
are submissive, even tempered, even cheerful in
their own quiet way ; they trudge out every morn-
ing up to their knees in mud, without drum or
trumpet, with no other music than an occasional
snatch of their own martial airs sung in chorus; they
come back at night drenched, fagged, listless, like
men who will do their duty at any cost, but who
field that duty and its unchanging rounds, and its
dreary continuance—and lite itself—a burden.
Something occurred to-day to diversify the dull-
ness of this uneventful existence. Two or three
regiments were mustered together on the high
grounds near llybbol Mill to witness the distribution
of medals and crosses awarded to some of the men
and officers of the 3d and 18th Regiments, and of an
artillery company, who distinguished themselves at
the affair of Missunde. The weather was unpropi-
tious. It always is in this luckless climate. The
people will have it that it is more unpleasant this
year than it ever was within the memory of the
oldest inhabitant. But I have been accustomed to
remarks of this kind in all countries and at all sea-
sons, whenever the elements are at all out of order,
and have learnt to distrust the memory of that same
" oldest inhabitant." The weather was unpropi-
tious, as I was saying; the rain came down in pelt-
ing ehowere, driven by a gusty wind into our faces,

and the land, upon which the sun's face has not
smiled for a fortnight,was one great sea of unfathom-
able mud. The spot, however, was well chosen. The
Dybbol windmill is the centre of the great Dybbol
position. Towards the west the view is everywhere
bounded by bastions bristling with cannon. But on
the north, south, and east it extends widely over the
Sound, the open sea, theVemmingbund, the mean but
not unpicturesque town of Sonderborg, a very D etch
toy village, and almost the whole isle of Alsen,
a wavy surface of brown fields, dotted here and
there by a few white streaks, the remnants of wan-
ing snow-drifts, with large tracks of dark forest
mantling the highest summits, and sloping down
with a graceful sweep to the water's edge. The
troops, drawn up in long lines in the uneven crest
of the Dybbol eminence, presented a goodly sight,
the men all wrapped in their great high-collared
overcoats, with their rich sandy hair reaching far
drawn beyond the nape of their necks (an unsol-
dierly habit, from which Scandinavian vanity is
not weaned), with their air of usual earnestness
and patient resignation, enlivened for the occasion
by the expectation of the ceremony they had been
brought to attend.
Presently, General Gerlach, the Commander-in-
Chid, rode up at the head of a numerous, prancing
staff--.--our only band struck up a few notes, blown
by the high wind into empty space, and the Gene-
ral, after equally wasting in their inaudible words,
proceeded to the business of the day. Each of the
candidates for distinction stepped up to him at the
head of the company to which he belonged, and
which was made to share in a certain manner the
honour bestowed upon the individual, and the
" bauble" was in all cases accompanied by kind and
affable words. The troops, in the end, defiled before
their chief ; there were livelier strains of music, loud
hurrahs, a chorus of the Tappre Land-soldat, and
four men went back to town, their hearts beating
under the dear Dannebrog, and their comrades
roused to emulation of their deeds by the hope of a
reward which, as it would seem, Denmark is too
wise to cheapen by too lavish a bestowal of it.
ALSENS, ISLAND OF FUNEN, March 12.
I have fairly turned my back on Sonderborg, and
am on my way to Fredericia in the hope of more
strring times and a more interesting situation.
When I left the isle of Alsen this morning I had
reason to feel sure that the Prussians could not
and would not attempt any forward movement for
at least a fortnight to come. Should I find the
Austrians in Jutland equally anxious to " look be-
fore they leap," I think I should leave the war in
Denmark to find out such solution as it best could,
in sheer despair of being able to interest English
readers with a perpetual reiteration of " 'Nothing
going on 1 nothing to note !"