296 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
nant a trait in his character, and which found eloquent expres- sion on numerous occasions. To a deputation of Holsteinians visiting him at Friedrichsruh in 1895, when responsibilities of office no longer sealed his lips, he openly confessed that the war against Denmark had been of long preparation, and that he as leading statesman in regard to Sleswic and Holstein had always been actuated by the principle that "that must we have!"
However that may be whether there in Prussian govern- ment circles at that time actually existed a disposition to redeem the pledge of 1866, or whether assimilation was thought to be more quickly attained by conciliatory means at any rate, dur- ing the first decade or so there prevailed a condition compara- tively free from the harsh methods characteristic of a later period. Trusting to a speedy reunion with the mother-country, a large proportion of the population (at the present time num- bering about 20,000) had taken advantage of an agreement between Prussia and Denmark guaranteeing to all announcing their intention prior to 1870 the privilege of retaining their Danish subjectivity, though domiciled in Sleswic, thereby, of course, barring themselves from all participation in public affairs ; while the majority of the young men, in order to escape Prussian military service, emigrated to the United States or Denmark. The danger of this policy, from a national point of view, had not yet become apparent to a people who, despite their inborn antipathy for Germany and the Germans, did not hesitate to place confidence in their good faith as a nation.
This confidence was, however, doomed to disappointment. In the year 1878 the covenant of Prague was emended by the con- tracting parties, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and Art. V, solemnly sworn to and signed by the rulers of the two countries "in the name of the most holy and indivisible Trinity," was unceremoniously stricken from the statute books. In the inter- vening twelve years official Germany had revised her code of international ethics. Ideas of national honor had been subordi- nated to ideals of territorial grandeur. The reawakened spirit of German unity, bewailing the fate of compatriots, severed from the parent stem, in Austria and Baltic Russia, felt no compunc-
