Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1939, Page 378
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LE NORD
which contains the possibility of
warlike complications between Ger-
many and Great Britain will imply
serious difficulties and risks to Den-
mark, as this country is strategically
situated at a point where important
English and German interests cross
each other. That was the situation
in 1914, but all the same Denmark
avoided being involved in the War.
Mr. Joesten points out that this
“was due not so much to the intrin-
sic wisdom of the policy adopted in
this instance (i. e. the decision taken
on August 5th, 1914, to close with
mines all the straits leading from
the North Sea to the Baltic that
were under Danish sovereignty) as
to the unexpectedly happy outcome
of the highly doubtful speculation
that the English would keep away”
(p. 259). This view is a very super-
ficial one — as superficial and un-
based on real facts as numerous
other assertions advanced by Mr.
Joesten. The Danish policy 1914
must be judged on the background
of naval and strategical conditions
existing at this moment.
The question of the closing or not
closing of the Baltic had, during the
ten years before the Great War, at
certain intervals played a promi-
nent part in the political debate,
not least during the German at-
tempt to create a continental coali-
tion against England in 1904—1907
(the famous Bjórkó-Treaty 24th
July 1905). England had then in an
unequivocal way manifested its tra-
ditional point of view against the
closing and emphasized this by re-
peatedly sending naval squadrons
into the Danish waters. But the si-
tuation in 1914 was no longer the
same. The tremendous development
of the German navy, and the
deepening of the Kiel-canal, which,
according to circumstances, enabled
Germany to concentrate its fight-
ing-fleet either in the Baltic or the
North Sea, had completely changed
conditions in favour of Germany.
De facto the Baltic had become a
mare clausum, a closed German sea,
unless England was able to create
a home-fleet so superior that even
its division would have no danger
against the whole German fleet.
The total German material of ar-
moured ships in 1900 had been only
1f7 of what England possessed; m
1910 the relation had grown to */s
and in 1914 it was about Lhe
maintenance of England’s tradition-
al Baltic policy demanded a return
of the reciprocal relation of the
English-German naval fighting-
forces to the period before 1910,
and this surpassed what England
could supply. The whole of this
totally altered situation in the
spring of 1914 was thoroughly dis-
cussed in the then leading Russian
paper “Novoje Vremja” (given in
extenso in the “Berlingske Tidende’,
15th May 1914). This, of course,
was fully understood by the British
statesmen, a fact clearly seen in the
highly interesting memorandum of
19th August 1914 from Mr. Winston
Churchill, then First Lord of the