UNCONQUERABLE DANES

Kaikoura Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 58, 27 July 1944, Page 4

UNCONQUERABLE DANES

STILB STRUGGLE ON.

The absence of dramatic news does not indicate that a bitter, relentless struggle is not going on in Denmark. The Danes are probably the least dramatic people in all of Europe. They have a penchant for under-statement and depreciation of their own, but underneath a calm and even smiling exterior they can be as stubborn and relentless as any. At present the Danes are efficiently organised to spare the R.A.F. a waste ful and dangerous job, the bombing of Danish factories working under compulsion for the Germans. “We can blow up the factories much more efficiently than the English; we can spare the surrounding area from damage by misses; we can do so at less cost and danger; and we can prove that we also are in the fight,” they say. And then they proceed to hoodwink the Gestapo while they systematically destroy war industries and transportation systems. There is probably no sabotage in Europe which is more efficient, more relentless, more unobtrusive, and less dramatic. The struggle in Denmark is bitterly serious. It may not appear to be so on

the surface, but after three years of blustering make-believe, wherein the clumsy Nazis pretended to wear a velvet glove over their mailed fist, the fight has become a cruel one with no punches pulled. The Danes were never fooled. In the face of German successes they practiced skilful procrastination, and there were a few influential collaborators, but the day of even superficial pretence is long since over. The fight is of necessity an underground one, but it is well organised and efficient. The cruel nature of the oppression was recently brought to the attention of the world by the brutal murder of the noted poet and playwright "(Kaj Munk), a Danish pastor who denounced the Nazis openly and cour* ageo'tisly. He could not be silenced, and the “masters” dared not gaol him, although they had complete control over the country. So they murdered him. But they only succeeded in giving the Danish people a martyr whose spirit inspired them to even greater opposition and hate. He has taken his place alongside the beloved King Christian as a symbol of undyjng resist-

ance. The struggle against German domination is no recent one in Danish history. If there is one international feature which has consistently characterised Danish history, it is defence against powerful southern neighbours. For a thousand years the Danes stood guard to the south. From the days of Charlemagne to the eras of Bismarck and Hitler the struggle has been going on. . . In 1864 Bismarck made little Denmark the first and experimental victim in his imperialistic designs, and the province of Schleswig was torn from the mother country. For 50 cruel years the Prussians tried to subdue the Danes in Schleswig by force, but the day of reckoning came, and in 1920 a joyful reunion took place after the Danes had wisely refused to accept more German territory than was theirs by language and sentiment. The Germans will never conquer the Danish people. For a thousand years the Danes have been unconquerable. They have probably never been in as dire straits as to-day, but their unquenchable opposition is stronger than ever. The Germans are realising it, and they using the only method they , know against it, force. The result is an ever increasing opposition. It is high

that we also recognise this spirit. Among the United Nations, among the unconquerables, the Allied cause has no stauncher friends, no more adamant foes of German oppression than the people of Denmark. ,Johannes Knudson, in the Des Moines Register.