310 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
advocate of leniency or considerateness toward the alien popu- lations receives but scant courtesy. Every complaint, however well founded, is met with a shoulder-shrug; every recital of wrongs actually wrought, however crying, is brushed aside with a sneer or a flat denial ; appeals are drowned in a chorus of hisses and calls "To order!"
Not a concession not a confession has ever been wrenched from the rulers. If legislative results were the only norm, the faithful labors of the three Danes at Berlin must, indeed, be deemed a failure.
However, these debates forced upon the government, these interpellations that must be answered, serve one purpose which should not be lost sight of : they keep North Sleswic in the eyes of the world ; they accentuate the determination of its people never to give in ; they stimulate the political conscience of a slowly but surely growing number of Germans into an acknowl- edgment of the fact that true national greatness cannot be firmly founded on police power ; and the echo reverberating across the frontier reminds a watchful public in Europe and America that here is one acute phase of a problem that is fast pressing for solution the problem of the right of a stronger nation to oppress a weaker with a distinct but equal culture, and " assimilate" it by coercion and annihilation.
III. RESULTS.
And what, now, have been the results of this forty -years' war what the gains and what the losses ? A hasty survey of the field will reveal the following facts :
There has been a constant influx of German elements into the towns government officials with their retinues ; military gar- risons ; tradesmen and shopkeepers dependent upon, or attracted by, these. Thus the slight Danish majority from the first period of the occupation has been changed into a slight German one in later years. Many workingmen of neutral national tint, who used to vote the Danish ticket as the politically more liberal one, have now definitively cast their lot with the Social Demo- cratic party.
