Repository: UIHistories Project: War Publications - WWI Compilation 1923 - Article 20 [PAGE 5]

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lets than ten years in the country) shall be allowed to participate in the referendum. Former residents who have been exiled by the Prussian authorities shall also be allowed to vote. The Danish government has been requested to present the case of North Sleswick to the Allied powers and has consented to do so. It seems extremely probable that the peace conference will take favorable action. That North Sleswick will cast an overwhelming vote for reunion with Denmark is beyond question. The referendum, if held, will add at least 150,000 persons to the Danish population; if Mid Sleswick is also allowed to participate, the number may exceed 200,000. It was argued at the Aabenraa conference that the present anarchic conditions ' in Germany are likely to influence the voters of Mid Sleswick very strongly in the direction of a choice of allegiance to Denmark. But the conference was also agreed that "we must not demand more than what is really ours." The Kiel Canal It has been urged by certain influential English editors and statesmen that not only the Danish-Speaking part of Sleswick but the entire province ot Sleswick-Holstein should be transferred to Denmark. The origin of this suggestion lies in an effort to find a satisfactory solution for the problem of the Kiel Canal. For there seems to be a strong feeling in certain quarters that Germany must be deprived of the control ot this waterway. The Kaiser Wilhelm Canal (usually called the Kiel Canal) begins at Brunsbuttel at the mouth of the Kibe River and terminates at Haltenau on the Baltic Sea, two or three miles north of Kiel Brunsbuttel is in Holstein, while Haltenau is just within the boundary of Sleswick. for a distance of twenty miles or more (between Rendsborg and Haltenau) the canal runs very close to or along the border separating the two old duchies; for a short distance it cuts through what has always been Sleswick territory. The annexation of the entire province would consequently place the Danes in possession of the entire canal. The annexation of Sleswick alone might, perhaps, be sufficient, as it would make the canal an international waterway. Such an arrangement would leave the Germans in Possession of the greater part of it, but the Danes would control the Baltic terminal, and they would also share to some extent in the control of the traffic on the canal because of its character as a waterway on the boundary. Shortly after the armistice had been proclaimed a writer 5