even though German culture, which is so much more extensive, stands open to them as well, and who in fact do not reject or renounce the latter because they are instinctively attracted towards the former ?

V.

As the story goes, the Danes are being punished for a hostile mental attitude towards Germany. German papers are full of false representations of this alleged Danish national hatred. At the time when the Prussian compulsory measures were put in force in Sleswick there was no national hatred in Denmark towards the Germans. The Germans who reside in great numbers here have in strong terms given evidence of this. The many Germans who, year after year, visit our country, and especially Copenhagen and its environs, can testify to the welcome which they have received and the friendliness which has been shown them. A majority of them have expressed their satisfaction with their sojourn, and with the courtesy which they have individually received, even though they may perhaps know that, in the nature of things, Germans as Germans are not the most popular of guests in Denmark.

If this fact has given offence or seemed to them unreasonable, then there is only this to be said, that, on this point, the Germans are singular. First they conquered with powder and ball two-fifths of the kingdom, destroyed its position as a European State, cast it, bleeding from thousands of wounds, back into political unimportance, parted kinsmen, and annoyed the reluctantly incorporated population with no little inventive skill, no mean and petty spirit of tormenting, and now they want to be loved into the bargain! In the summer of 1864 there was scarcely a family in Denmark to whom the war had not brought a loss. In one house the father was missing, in another the son. Women were bereft of husband, lover, or child. Among the young men one had lost a brother, another a friend or comrade. No one was wholly spared. And the conqueror has apparently imagined that, even before the wounds were healed or the losses effaced, the conquered would not only admire him, but love him too! In the German papers they now speak as if it were a duty to love Germany; and then, again, they do not care a pin for love, and join in singing the old song: "Let them hate, if only they fear!" (Oderint modo metuant !)-a motto which was more suitable in the mouth of a pagan Roman Emperor than in that of a Christian monarch, who, only just returned from the Mount of Olives, has the Gospel of Love on the tip of his tongue-a motto which strikes with terror neither the Danish South Jutlander nor the Dane of Denmark.

But although, as already said, the Germans, after the war with Denmark, could not possibly expect to be loved here, it happened, curiously

enough, that, not long after the war, the very generation which had lived through that sad catastrophe and seen all its national hopes mowed down as by the stroke of a scythe, understood the danger of breaking off its peaceful and intellectual connection with Germany, and, in spite of being misjudged, which was the inevitable result, it endeavoured to place the new German Empire in the most favourable light possible, from pure patriotism, from the fear of seeing the Danish nation weakened and intellectually deteriorated by a sterile hatred. Again and again prominent individuals of that generation tried to set right the misunderstanding that Germany was fundamentally and persistently an enemy to Denmark. They had national Chauvinism against them. Gradually, however, a group of politicians and writers was formed who took upon themselves the odium of being considered half-German, and who, at the risk of permanent loss of the popularity which they had deliberately thrown away, for years spoke of Germany in a conciliatory way, warned the population against the thought of winning back Sleswick by force, and never grew weary of proclaiming that we must study Germany, understand her, do justice to her, look upon her great men, even those who had done us most injury, from an historical point of view. They reminded the Danes, too, that Germany had had men of the highest rank, that a nation forms itself after the pattern of its foremost men, and that it was not impossible we might finally come to good terms with a people that had produced so much greatness.

The attempt appeared to succeed. Hatred and wrath were beginning to be forgotten, and a peaceful humanity take their place, as gradually a younger generation grew up, for whom that which their elders had lived through was mere history. And now-now the Prussian Government gives the lie to these spokesmen for German humanity. A clenched fist in the face is its only plea.

Some years ago the actors of the Royal Theatre were forbidden to produce some innocent old vaudevilles in Sleswick towns (although permission had already been given to the owner of a theatre in Haderslev); indeed, they were not even allowed to remain over night at an hotel. Intense indignation was roused in Denmark by this narrow-minded police rule, which used as a pretext the danger to the peace and quietness of Germany of a scenic representation in Danish. This, however, was nothing compared with recent events, which, however, will in South Jutland only have a stimulating effect on the self-respect and patriotism of the people; while in Denmark those who have hitherto tried to bring about a better understanding between Danes and Germans will throw up the game, and without superfluous words take their stand on the side of the oppressed.

The Danes can and must submit to humiliations, which the stronger nation again and again puts upon the weaker, humiliations which

But one thing they

itself would never stand from any other Power. cannot do. They cannot give up exerting all their power to preserve their language and culture within the Sleswick territory, which for a thousand years has been Danish, and is so still. They would be miserable creatures if they could. From the Danish side no attempt has been made, nor can be made, to regain politically what has been lost. No political agitation has been undertaken, nor can it be undertaken, to excite the South Jutlanders against the conditions which by ill-fate have once been legally imposed upon them. alliance of hearts and minds cannot be broken even by a great Power like Germany.

But the

How insecure this Prussian rule feels in North Sleswick in spite of its mailed fist! Everything alarms it. It dares not allow Danish actors to play an old vaudeville dating from 1830. It fears the storm of applause which would break loose as soon as the first unimportant, but Danish, words were heard from the stage. It feels obliged to forbid a Danish orator from holding any discourse whatsoever on South Jutland territory. He is not even allowed to speak on literature not on German literature, not even on Goethe. For one can really never know!-One cannot be sure that the audience, in spite of the subject being of no political significance whatever, though even it be a German national topic, might not seize the opportunity to applaud a speaker from Denmark. And in Heaven's name that must not happen! On such fragile feet of clay does the Prussian Colossus stand in Sleswick that it cannot bear a hand-clap after a Danish lecture on Goethe. Still less can it endure Danish reading-books and Danish song-books in the hands of little children, or Danish colours in a lady's gown or upon a house; Danish songs it fears even behind closed doors. What is the use of gendarmes if not to wage war against colours and songs?

Such is the measure of the anxiety of Prussia, equipped with all the instruments of power, as to whether German might, German wealth, German military glory, German science and art, and half a hundred million of German people will exercise so great an attraction on the inhabitants of North Sleswick as the important miniature State which bears the name of Denmark. Prussia has the power to tempt, attract, and reward, or, on the other hand, to persecute and punish, them. And yet she feels insecure, yet she falls short of her aim, and will continue to fail more and more as the Danish people develop, as its best sons hope, into a free nation, with all the virtues of a free nation, the chief of which is liberalism-liberalism which detests and despises false and narrow-minded patriotism, an arbitrary police, uniformity, and the spirit of slavish submission. Prussia is a terrible rival for any Power, most of all for a very small one, even if the point at issue is only a peaceful battle for the hearts and thoughts of

a conquered population. Denmark can never cope with Prussia in the brilliancy and splendour in which she stands there in mail and plate with the gilded spiked helmet on her head.

If then the inhabitants of North Sleswick greatly desired their small share in the formidable power of Prussia, they would soon have forgotten their Danish mother-tongue, and the little country where it can be freely spoken and learned. But, stronger than by all display of power, they are apparently drawn by liberalism, which grants to every individual the right of independent self-development; by the sentiment of equality, which has thrown off the spirit of caste; by a culture which, modest as it is, nevertheless reaches down to the lowest class of the people, and, at the same time, so high that it has humanised the fundamental view of politics. It cannot but make a certain lasting impression in Sleswick that, in spite of all Denmark's imperfections, the idea of turning out a stranger in order to annoy a native, or of depriving fathers and mothers from political motives of the right of parental authority over their children, is to us something inconceivable, something that lies infinitely beneath the whole mental level of the people. And the result has been that the Prussian rule in South Jutland, which sets no value upon ingratiating itself, has not even made a fine show-quite the contrary!

GEORGE BRANDES.

THE CANCER PROBLEM.

TREASON IN THE REPUBLIC OF THE BODY.

A

Successful

MAN'S worst foes are "they of his own household." and even invigorating warfare can be waged against enemies without, but a contest with traitors within dulls the spear and paralyses the arm. Against the frankly foreign epidemic enemies of the race a sturdy and, of late years, highly successful battle has long been fought. We have banished the plague, drawn the teeth of small-pox, riddled the armour of diphtheria, and robbed consumption of half its terrors. In spite of the ravings and gallery-play of the Lombroso mountebanks, anent "degeneracy," our bills of mortality show a marked diminution in the fatality of every important disease which afflicts humanity—save one.

And as the deaths per thousand living from this malady have almost doubled in England, and nearly trebled in the United States, during the last thirty years, if official statistics are to be taken at their face value, the contrast is a sufficiently striking one. To find that, in spite of our utmost endeavours, cancer has apparently doubled the number of its victims in the very same period that even the widespread and intractable "white plague of the North," consumption, has been baulked of more than a third of its yearly death-tribute is enough to give the most heedless of us pause. What wonder that the conviction is rapidly crystallising in the medical mind that, since the tuberculosis question has been set in a fair way towards solution, the coming problem, the riddle of the Sphinx for the twentieth century, is that of cancer? To a twelfth of us who have passed the age of forty it is indeed a riddle of the Sphinx, for unless we solve it it will destroy us.

The first step in our approach to the consideration of this problem is, of course, a clear idea of the nature and tendencies of the cancer