Evening star., 1943-05-09
Hands Are
Germans Keep Tight
Control of Nation
By Thomas X. Henry.
LONDON.


borg castle in Prince Hamlet's old town
of Elcinore, the brave knight Holger
Danske, Denmark's sleeping folk hero, is
stirring uneasily of lonely midnights now,
about to wake from his thousand years OF
slunlber.
So, at least, say the country folk who
have been told from their cradles that
the Danish author will rise and lead
his people to freedom. And for the past
three years nightmares must have made
restless the timeless sleep of the ancient
warrior It is time for the fulf1llment of
the prophecies.
Perhaps a bit uneasy over the folk
tales of Holger today is an aging gentle
man in Copenfagen-the picturesque,
cynical, contemptuous, idealistic. some-
what ruthless man of the world, diplo-
mat and statesman, Erik Scavenius He
is Denmark's Premier, placed in the posi-
ton by Won Ribbentrop over his own
protests that the people" of whom he
speaks with a contemptuous snarl, had
no confidence in him.
A strange bundle of contradictions is
this Scavenius, say Danes in London,
who know him best. Some are of his
own party, others among his bitterest
political opponents. But all draw a pic
ture of him as one of the most remark
able characters to have emerged out of
the war man who many psychoan-
a re n1jnt,f IN 1o
They agree that he is combinatio
OF Machiavelli and Mahatma Gandhi, an
honest man who is utterly without scru-
pies and boasts of it, lover and despiser
of the common man.
Scavenius Hates Naziism.
He hates Nsziism and everything it
stands for. largely because its leaders are
despised plebians That he should serve
an ex-paperhanger and an ex-cham-
payne salesman cuts him to the quick
He is an aristocrat to the finger tips,
scion of one of the country's oldest and
bluest- -blooded families. For the people
and their opinions he has supreme con-
tempt. Yet he has been one of the chief
leaders of the radical" political party
slightly leftish group of small farmers,
tradesmen and intellectuals whose chief
platform is social welfare for the masses.
He has scant regard for humanity yet
he is one of the chief workers for peace
in the world. He was a leader in the
councils of the League of Nations. 1t
was due largely to the work of this man
and his associates that Denmark was
left with only the shadow of an army
NefcTe the present war. His argument
Wa5 the quite logical one that any force
tie country could afford would be use
less for more than few days that hope
esS military opposition to an invader
would only increase the hardShips of the
people after the defeat, and that support
Of a.detensive force would eat up money
badly needed for social security.
Personally he is about as far from
democrat" as could be imagined He
does not Contaminate his aristocratic
presence with contacts with the COM
mon man as an Individual Yet he has
been one of the chief agitators for the
abolition of titles, medals and the like
which tend to set up one man against
another He believes in democracy so
long as he doesn't have to mix with it,
and says so quite frankly
DisIiked but Honest.
Many of his former subordinates in
tensely dislike him, vet all agree that
in spite of his present role he is an
absolutely honest and sincere man, a
completely above selling himself or his
country, a gentleman of the old school
preserving some of the best traditions
of the old nobility He looks on the
low-born Gestapo leader who is set over
him as the dirt under his feet, yet jumps
at his bidding.
Anybody with brains, he says, can
solve any question whatsoever rightly in
half an hour. He can, he adds If
others cannot it is because they are
stupid. Four or five things have had
major role in shaping the character of
Scavenius say Danes who know him
and some of whom have suffered from
his tongue-lashings.
First. he is outspokenly and defantly
an atheist. He derides conscience. He
is guided only by his own intellectual
concepts of right.
Second. his family from it's beginnings
Is OF pure Danish blood, whereas most
of the noble families of the kingdom
originally were Germans. But the Ger
mans through the centuries have become
the most Danish of Danes. But there
has been a gulf which Scavenius feels,
at least subconsciously, and his reaction
to it has been to become the most Ger
manophile of Danes, with certain reser-
vatons.
His first hero is the Prussian states
man, Won Stein, VINO alter the fall of
Napoleon remodoled the Prussian con-
stitution so as to embody some of the
democratic ideas of the French revo-
luton which had swept over Europe. but
yet keep the junkers in absolute control.
Scavenius would like to introduce in
Denmark some of the ideas of the Rus
sian revolution and at the same time
strengthen the hands of the nobility.
In his mind. say former associates,
there probably never has been any ques-
ton but that he was supremely right
in urging a policy of cooperation with
the despised Nazis. Ever since he was
a young undersecretary in the Danish
Legation in Berlin more than 40 years
ago and fell under the spell of Won
Stems political philosophy he has made
fn4i IL aGR