Treaty With Germany, Political Clauses - Schleswig

Title

Treaty With Germany, Political Clauses - Schleswig

Creator

Slosson, Preston W. (Preston William), 1892-1984

Identifier

WWP19036

Date

No date

Source

Robert and Sally Huxley

Publisher

Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museusm

Language

English

Text

TREATY WITH GERMANY.

PART III, SECTION XII.                         POLITICAL CLAUSES - SCHLESWIG.
                                                                   by PW Slosson 

The sources used in this Section, to which reference is made, are:

1. Minutes of the Supreme Council, including

a. Council of Ten (B.C.)

b. Council of Five (F.M.)

c. Council of Four (I.C.) and (C.F.).

2. Preliminary Conditions of Peace, definitive text of the Treaty and correspondence with the German Delegation.

3. Minutes of the Commission on Belgian and Danish Affairs.

4. Reports of the Commission on Belgian and Danish Affairs:

a. Report of March 19 Danish Affairs.

b. Supplementary Note on Danish Affairs, April 4.

5. Report of Central Committee on Territorial Questions; German-Danish Frontier.

Part III. Section 12 (Schleswig).The basis for this section is the Report of the Commission on Belgian and Danish affairs. On February 21 M. Bernhoft presented to the Supreme Council, in the name of Denmark which he represented as Minister to Paris, the case of Schleswig. (This memorandum is printed as B.C. 36 Annex C). He requested that northern Schleswig vote as a unit, that Central Schleswig vote by communes, that the territory in question be evacuated by the Germans and that an Internattional Commission take the place of the German authorities during the period of the plebiscite. At Mr. Lansing's suggestion the study of the question was referred to the Commission on Belgian Affairs, already appointed.The Commission on Belgian and Danish Affairs made a preliminary Report on March 19, and on April 4 it made a supplementary Report extending the zone of the plebiscite to include the Eiderstedt peninsula. The Central Territorial Commission approved the recommendations of the Belgian-Danish Commission with minor changes.The Council of Five (Foreign Ministers. F.M. 2) discussed the Report and approved it on March 28 ad referendum to the Supreme Council (Council of Four).

After the conditions of peace had been presented to Germany, the Council of Four decided to restrict the area of the plebiscite (C.F. 69. June 14, 1919). This was a concession to Germany but it was made at the request of the Danish Government.Article 109, defining the area of the Schleswig plebiscite, is the essential part of the section and naturally the center of discussion. It is based on Article 1 of the Report of the Belgian-Danish Commission. Apart from the elimination of the third zone of the plebiscite the changes are verbal.

On the proposal of M. Laroche (France) the Commission agreed, on February 26, that while the demands of the Danish Government were to be taken as the basis for discussion it was not necessary that these claims should limit the competence of the Commission in defining the area or the conditions of the plebiscite.

At the suggestion of M. Laroche the definition of “north Schleswig” proposed by the Danish Government “situated north of a line starting from the sourthern part of the Island of Als, following the Flensborg Fjord up to Kobbermolle, the valley of the river Krusaa, passing south of Froeslev, making Padborg the frontier station, and follows the boundary between the departments of Slogs and Kaer, the river Skelbaek and finally the rivers Soenderaa and Vidaa, up to the point where the latter turns northwards and thence to the North Sea north of the northern point of the island of Sild” (minutes of second, February 26). This line excluded Flensborg from the unitary plebiscite of the first zone, and rightly in M. Laroche's opinion since Flensborg contained many Germans. This line was accepted by the Commission as defining the first zone of the plebiscite.For the second zone the Commission considered the proposal of the Danish Government, which corresponds to the second zone as defined in the peace treaty, but at first the Commission considered this zone too narrow. A boundary from Kappel to Tönning (which did not, however, include the Eiderstedt peninsula) was provisionally adopted on March 1. Sir Eyre Crowe (Britain) favored postponing the vote in the second zone until six months after the vote in the first zone (Feb. 26) but while the principle of postponement was accepted the much shorter period of five weeks was eventually adopted in the Commission Report. On March 8 M. Laroche (France) presented a draft report (Annex I to the minutes of the day) establishing a plebiscite in three stages; the first two zones corresponding closely to a “north” and “central” Schleswig as defined by the Danes, the third running a little south of the historic “Dannevirke” frontier. This draft was adopted, with moinor changes, and submitted to a committee of jurists consisting of Messers Miller (U.S.A.), Malkin (Britain) Fromageot (France) and Tosti (Italy). (Annex III to the minutes of the seventh session of the Commission, March 10, gives the embodiment of the draft report in the form of treaty articles by the committee of jurists).The Commission decided on March 1 to associate Swedish and Norwegian representatives with the delegates of the Allied and Associated Powers on the Commission to supervise the Schleswig plebiscite and on March 8 to limit the supervisory Commission to five members. (This International Commission is an entirely different body from the demarcation Commission provided for in Article 111). The authority of this International Commission was enhanced by an amendment introduced by the Central Territorial Commission giving it the disposal of military forces in case of necessity.Count Holstein's memorandum, favoring the inclusion of the Eiderstedt peninsula in the third zone of the plebiscite, induced the Commission to adopt a supplementary report, drafted by the American delegation, including this peninsula within the area subject to plebiscite (April 4) in spite of a vigorous protest from Mr. Fullerton-Carnegie (British secretary on the Commission) who contended that this Frisian district had become Germanized.The Italian delegates, Messrs. Ricci Busatti and Venutelli-Rey and Tosti, raised frequent objection to the plebiscite, not as applied in the particular case of Schleswig, but regarded as a precedent for other territorial settlements (minutes of the Belgian-Danish Commission for Feb. 26, March 12, March 13, March 14). The Italian delegation proposed to base the report of the Commission with respect to the plebiscite explicitly and exclusively on Article V of the Treaty of Prague 1866, thus establishing it on historical-legal instead of ethical or political grounds. To this Mr. Haskins (U.S.A.) objected that the said article referred to only part of the area for which it was now proposed to apply the plebiscite, that the article was abrogated by a later treaty, and that, in any case, the United States did not intend to abandon the principle of self-determination as a basis for the plebiscite. (Minutes of March 13). The Italian delegation retracted the demand for a revision of the Report of the Commission and contendted itself with a general reservation in this form:

“The Italian delegates, while entirely associating themselves with the conclusions arrived at by the Committee, feel that they must take this opportunity tof making reservations of a general kind relative to the scope of the principle of the plebiiscite as the sole method of solving territorial questions” (Minutes of March 14).

M. Tardieu, who served on thboth the Belgian-Danish and the Central Territorial Commisions, presented the Report to the Council of Five (F.M.2) on March 28. Mr. Balfour expressed some doubts as to the advisibility of a plebiscite by communes in the second and third zones, but M. Tardieyu explained that this method had been advocated by the Danes themselves who were sure of a mjajority in the first zone but feared that if the second zone should vote as a unit the result might favor Germany although many individual communes would be pro-Danish. He explained that the purpose of separating the second and third zones, with a postponed vote in the last, was to encourage the pro-Danish element. Baron Sonnino expressed some doubts as to whether the case of Schleswig could be dealt with in isolation from other territorial settlements.The Council of Four yielded to the representations of the Danish Government and modified the area subject to plebiscite after the conditions of peace had been presented to the Germans. In the minutes of the Council for June 14 (C.F. 69) it is stated:

“In regard to Schleswig, the Council decided in principle to drop the idea of the plebiscite in the most southerly of the three zones. This decision was taken in view of the objections of the Danish Government.”

M. Fromageot and Mr. Hurst, of the drafting Committee, were instructed without waiting for any initialled authority to proceed with the necessary alterations in the Treaty of Peace with Germany to give effect to this decision”.

Belgian-Danish and Central Territorial

Article 110, corresponding to Article 2 of the Commission Reports and Article 111 of the preliminary conditions of peace, establishes the basis of frontier demarcation after the plebiscite.

Central Territorial

Article 111, corresponding to Article 3 of the Central Territorial Commission Report and Article 110 of the preliminary conditions of peace, deals with the composition of the demarcation commission. This article was inserted by the Central Territorial Commission.

Article 112, corresponding to Article 3 of the Belgian-Danish Commission Report, Article 4 of the Central Territorial Commission Report and Article 112 of the preliminary conditions of peace, deals with the acquirement of nationality.

Article 113, (with such changes of form as were necessary to make it conform to analogous articles in other parts of the Treaty dealing with territorial cession and the lengthening of the period for option from six months to twelve) corresponds to Article 4 of the Belgian-Danish Commission Report, Article 5 of the Central Territorial Commission Report and Article 113 of the preliminary conditions of peace. It deals with the right of option in annexed territory.

Article 114, refers the financial adjustments consequent on cession of German territory to Denmark to the general Article 254 of Part IX (Financial Clauses). The analogous article in the Belgian-Danish Commission Report ran:

“The Treaty of Peace will settle the proportion and the nature of the financial obligations of Germany which are to be assumed by the Danish Government, and all other questions arising from the return made to it of territory the abandonment of which was imposed upon it by the Treaty of the 3rd October, 1884.”

M. Bernhoft, in presenting the Danish case before the Commission on Belgian and Danish Affairs, proposed that Denmark should repay to Germany a proportionate share of the public debt charge on the area taken from Denmark in 1864 and also for public improvements since that time, but no part of Germany's military expenditures, even of the pre-war period (minutes of March 6). The Danish proposal again arose after the presentation of the conditions of peace to Germany, but the Council of Four, on recommendation of the Financial Commission, resolved to make no exception in favor of Denmark to the general financial liabilities for territories ceded by Germany under the provisions of Article 254. (C.F. 69, June 14).

Original Format

Letter

Files

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Citation

Slosson, Preston W. (Preston William), 1892-1984, “Treaty With Germany, Political Clauses - Schleswig,” No date, WWP19036, R. Emmet Condon Collection, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.