"In setting out the facts I will try hard to keep from my presentation of them any distortion due to the disgust and burning anger that they evoked in me, as they must do in every patriot of this Empire.
"Lest even for a moment a wrong and cruel suspicion rest upon little Denmark--namely, that she is unfriendly towards the Allies and has been 'two-faced' in the many tokens of friendliness and respect she has shown us, I say with conviction that there is not a truer or deeper love for England and the English than exists to-day in Denmark. These Danes, forefathers of so many of our race, warm still to Britain and the British. Their hearts glow to our successes, yearn to our reverses. Deep down they are for us through and through. The best Danes revolt at the work Denmark is now forced to do. A big and greedy German fist hangs over her--threatening, bullying, driving. 'So far as in you lies,' says the bully behind that fist, 'you must be useful to us--as useful at least as you are to our enemy'--(aside, 'even more useful if we can make you so')--'and should you fail by one iota to yield us such surplus food commodities as you produce and such food commodities as you can get'--(aside, 'by hook or by crook')--'from abroad, then the consequences for you will be serious. We shall seize Denmark.'"
Here follow several columns of statistics relating to the importation of foodstuffs to Denmark, showing increases in some instances of upwards of 1,000 per cent. upon her normal supplies.
Denmark's total population is under 3,000,000, and to argue that she would, or even could, use these commodities herself is mere foolishness. Extracting further:
"The vast bulk of Denmark's pork goes to Germany--either directly, by train or ship, or _via_ Sweden, where obliging workmen, dignified _pro tem_. with the title 'merchant consignee' (but whose whole stock-in-trade consists perhaps of a hammer, some nails and a batch of labels), change the labels on the goods and perhaps turn upside down the marked ends of the packing-cases, and then re-consign the goods to Germany.
"And they may even leave Sweden in the very railway trucks and cases in which they have arrived and travel to Germany back through Denmark in sealed trucks over which the Danish Customs have no control. Or there may be no need to trouble to send them to Sweden. They may leave Copenhagen docks direct for Lübeck, Warnemunde, Stettin, or Hamburg, in direct steamers, of which some 500 sailed during the year. Or they may go by train. Huge trains leave every day. The trains and ferries and boats connecting Denmark and Germany are so full that there is competition for room. How often may one see the Danish shippers, in advertising their sailings for German ports, add the significant words, 'Cargo space already full' days before the actual date of sailing!