IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 98 



really in love till he is in love with a plain woman. 

 The Danes say that Germany will keep its promise 

 of giving back part of Schleswig ; the Germans say 

 nothing, and Schleswig remains the Promised Land, 

 a Canaan with a platter face and a dingy complexion. 

 At Flensburg came the dismal ceremonies of the 

 frontier : the long wait at a barrier in a draught 

 flavoured with chloride of lime, the alien fingers of 

 the official burrowing in tea-gown or clean shirt, 

 then the hard-earned chalk-mark, and the freedom 

 of Denmark conferred. Almost instantly the face of 

 the country changed, the long, laborious heavings of 

 Schleswig ceased, and a landscape of small, pleasant 

 things sprang up, in which were beech-woods, and 

 the whitewashed gables of churches, and little brisk 

 towns with a good deal of red about them, and blue 

 and silver soldiers. Even the railway carriages had 

 a gayer air. The Damen Koupee was a salon, with 

 arm-chair upholstered in a refined drab damask, and 

 the royal monogram floated and sank in elusive 

 silhouette among the windy billowing of the curtains, 

 in token of State ownership. At Fredericia was the 

 first sample of a Danish luncheon, spread at immense 

 length in a very clean refreshment-room with a 

 boarded floor scrubbed to a creamy white. Among 

 the potted plants stood little bottles of claret, labelled 

 with the choicest names of the Medoc vineyards, 

 with prices attached which seemed startlingly dis- 

 proportionate to their prestige. But no one took 

 advantage of the sacrifice, and we discovered subse- 

 quently that no one ever does. That is to say, no 

 one ever does twice. But everything was con- 

 spicuously clean and appetising, and the Danes ate 

 as if they had appetites, but not with the sauve qui 

 pent air which would have been inevitable elsewhere. 

 They seem, as a nation, to have the gift of eating 



