Denmark. August 12, 1848

Denmark.
No. 73, August 12, 1848
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
* Copenhagen, August 5. How profoundly people here judge German conditions is shown by an article in yesterday’s *Fädreland*, according to which the German-Prussian question is at the same time a “socialist-democratic” one, because the printers have simultaneously stopped work and the republicans are ready to hurl themselves into the movement and win victories for their ideas.

Letters from Hadersleben complain of excesses by the German free corps. From Flensburg complaints are made about the press-ganging of the provisional government, the consequence of which is that all the young men flee to the Danish ships. From the Flensburg Fjord alone 200 fugitives are said to have come, and the corvette *Najaden* is reported to have taken on 50 in a single day. Far more, however, are said to have wandered to Jutland or Funen. At night towns are raided, the young men dragged out of bed and hauled to Flensburg. Such acts of violence naturally swell the number of fugitives. A Schleswig deserter who has gone over to the Danes relates that every day long disquisitions on the terrible punishments imposed for flight and desertion are read out to the army – simple death being the mildest – and that they are not treated like soldiers at all but guarded like condemned criminals. Anyone who shows no desire to fight the Danes is threatened with being sent to Prussia to scuffle with the Polacks. All recruiting, however, is frustrated by the flight of those liable to serve; at the conscription in Apenrade only three cripples appeared, and in Tondern but a single one – and that a one-eyed Frisian.

Our slight sympathy for the Danes is well known; nevertheless we give these reports, because no other German newspaper will publish them and because we find nothing improbable in them for a German government supported by Prussian Guards officers. Incidentally, the Danes have never done any better – the Christian-Germanic brutality is common to both peoples.

Copenhagen, August 5. In June 2,094 ships declared the Sound toll, and in the period from January 1 to June 30, 6,174, which is 2,757 fewer than in the corresponding half-year of 1847, yet still 256 above the average figure of the last decade. In the half-year of 1847, 2,588 German ships passed the Sound, including 1,370 Prussian, 531 Hanoverian, and 461 Mecklenburg; by contrast, in the past half-year only 566 German ships. The reduction affecting Prussian shipping alone amounts to 1,032 ships.