Ten Years Near the German Frontier: A Retrospect and a Warning

'Frankly,' I said, 'are not you Swedes putting all your eggs into one basket? What have you to do with the Teuton and Slavic quarrel? Do you believe for a moment that the ultra-Bismarckian policy which controls Germany will consider you anything but a pawn in the diplomatic game? I think that, as Swedes, you ought to help to consolidate Scandinavia, and your diplomatists, instead of playing into Germany's hands, ought to make it worth her while to support her, as far as you choose. You are selling yourself too cheap.'

His eyes flashed. 'You do not talk like an American,' he said. Then he remembered himself and became polite, even 'mannered.' 'I mean that you talk too much like diplomatists of the old school of secret diplomacy.'

'I believe that there are secrets in diplomacy which no diplomatist ever tells.'

'But you would have us attempt to disintegrate Russia, and, at the same time, play with Germany in order to make ourselves stronger.'

'I did not say so. For some reason or other, the Germans call you "stupid Swedes."'

'Not now. That has passed. The Germans recognise our qualities,' he added proudly. 'The English do not. The Russians look on us only as their prey. You, being an American, are pro-Russian. I have heard that you were particularly pro-Russian. Not,' he added hastily, 'that you are anti-German. The German vote counts greatly in the United States, and you could not afford to be; you might lose your "job," as one of your ministers at Stockholm called it; but you, confess it! – have a regard for the Russians.'

'They are interesting. We of the North owe them gratitude for their conduct during our Civil War. Anti-German? I love the old Germany; I love Weimar and the Tyrol; but, speaking personally, I do not love the Prussianisation of Germany. I have written against the Kulturkampf. I dislike the "Prussian Holy Ghost" who tried to rule us back in the '80's, but my German colleagues recognise the fact that I see good in the German people, and love many of their qualities.'

'Still,' laughed the professor, who knows one of my best friends in Rome, 'they say that you came abroad to live down your attacks in the Freeman's Journal on the German Holy Ghost.'

I changed the subject; that was not one of the things I had to live down.

'Germany is our only friend, our only equal intellectually, our only sympathetic relative by blood. The Norwegians hate us, the Danes dislike us. We have the same ideas as the Germans, namely, that the elect, not the merely elected, must govern. It was Martin Luther's idea, and his idea has made Germany great.'

'But there is nothing contrary to that idea in the Northern League, which Count Carl Carlson Bonde and other Swedes dreamed about, is there? You Swedes seem to believe that Martin Luther was infallible in everything but religion. He would probably like to see most of you burned, although you are all "confirmed."'

The Professor laughed: 'Paris vaut une messe,' he quoted. 'I admit that Luther would not approve of the religious point of view of our educated classes; but, at least, we have a semblance of unity, while you, like the English, have a hundred religions and only one sauce. Our Lutheranism is a great bond with Germany, as well as our love of science and our belief in authority. As to the Northern League, Count Bonde was a dreamer.'

'Everybody is a dreamer in Sweden who is not affected by the Pan-German idea. Is that it?'

'You are badly informed,' he said. 'Your Danish environment has affected you. As long as we can control our people, we shall be great. We have only to fear the Socialist. The decision in essential matters must always rest with the king and the governing classes. Our army and navy will be supported by popular vote, as in Germany; they are the guarantees of our greatness.'

This was the opinion of most of the autocratic and military – and to be military was to be autocratic – classes in 1911.

Later I spoke with one of the most distinguished of the Norwegians, Professor Morgenstjern. He seemed to be an exception to the general idolatry of German Kultur.

It was impossible to get the Swede of traditions to see that Germany's policy was to keep the three Northern nations apart – not only the Northern nations but the other small nations. When, just before the war, Christian X. and Queen Alexandrina visited Belgium on their accession the German propagandists in Scandinavia were shocked; it was infra dig. It was 'French.' 'The King and Queen of Denmark will be visiting Alsace-Lorraine and wearing the tricolour!' a disappointed hanger-on in the German Legation said.

It was my business to find out what various Foreign Offices meant, not what they said they meant. 'Of open diplomacy in the full sun, there are few modern examples. Secrecy in diplomacy has become gradually greater than it was a quarter of a century ago, not from mere reticence on the part of ministers, but to a large extent from the decline of interest in foreign affairs.'

The writer of this sentence in the Contemporary Review alluded to England. This lack of interest existed even more in the United States. And then as militarism grew in Europe, one's business was to discover what the Admiralty thought, for in Germany and Austria, even in France, after the Dreyfus scandal, one must be able to know what the military dictators were about. The newspapers had a way of discovering certain facts that Foreign Offices preferred to hide. But the most astute newspaper owing to the necessity of having a fixed political policy and the difficulty of finding men foolish enough or courageous enough to risk life for money, could rarely predict with certainty what Foreign Offices really intended to do. Besides Foreign Offices, outside of Germany, were generally 'opportunists.'

Few diplomatists of my acquaintance were deceived by the Kaiser's professions of peace. That he wanted war seemed incredible, for he had the reputation of counting the cost. He was indiscreet at times, but his 'indiscretions' never led him to the extent of giving away the intentions of the General Staff. That he wanted to turn the Baltic into a German sea was evident. The Swedish 'activist' would calmly inform you that, if this were true, Germany would treat Sweden, and perhaps the other Scandinavian countries, as Great Britain treated the United States – the Atlantic, as everybody knew, being a 'British lake' and yet free to the United States!

There was no missing link in the German propaganda in Sweden. Prussia used the Lutheran Church as she had tried to use the German Jesuits and failed. The good commonsense of the Swedish common people alone saved them from making German Kultur an integral part of their religion. When it filtered out that, notwithstanding the close relationship of the Tsaritza of Russia with the German Emperor, the Prussian Camorra had determined to control Russia, to humiliate her, to control her, there were those among the leaders who saw what this meant. They saw Finland and the Aaland Islands Germanised, and their resources, the product of their mines and of their factories, as much Germany's as Krupp's output. The bourgeoisie and the common people saw no future glory or profit in this.

The knowledge of it filtered through; the Lutheran pastor, with his dislike of democracy, his love for the autocratic monarchy, 'all power comes from God,' I heard him quote, without adding that St. Paul did not say that 'All rulers come from God,' – could not convince the hard-thinking, hard-working Swede that religion meant subjugation to a foreign power. The Lutheran Church, which, like all national churches, was hampered by the State, could give no intelligent answer to his doubts, so he turned to the Social Democrats. The governing class in Sweden seemed to take no cognisance of the growth of democracy in the hearts of the people. Germany was alive to it and feared it; but, in Sweden, rather than admit it and its practical effects, the rulers ignored it, were shocked by the great tide of emigration to the United States, yet careless of its effects on Swedish popular opinion.

On one occasion in Copenhagen, King Gustav asked me why so many of his people emigrated to my country. The King of Sweden is a very serious man, not easily influenced or distracted from any subject that interests him, and the good of his people interested him very much. It was a difficult question to answer, for comparisons were always odious.

'I can better tell you, sir, why your subjects prefer to remain at home: – when they get good land cheap, and when they see the chance of rising beyond their fathers' position in the social scale.'

He began to speak, but etiquette demanded a move. When I met him again he returned to the subject. It was better that he should talk, and he talked well. It became evident to me that there was little good agricultural land in Sweden to give away, and the division between the classes was not so impassable as I had believed. He made that clear.

The Social Democrat in Sweden wants an equal opportunity, no wars to be declared by the governing classes, and the abolition of the monarchy. He is not concerned greatly with the Central Powers or the Entente. He was glad to see the Hohenzollerns displaced, but he is German in the sense that he is affiliated with the German Social Democrats who, he believes, were forced to deny their principles temporarily or they would have been thrown to the lions; and as, above all things, he prizes a moderate amount of material comfort for himself and his family, he will not go out of his way to be martyred; but even he was the victim of modified German propaganda; he was too patriotic to accept it all.

Of late, as we know, the Liberal Party has gained strength, and the designs of a small activist military coterie were frustrated by a series of circumstances, of which the Luxburg revelations were not the least; but the main reason was the coquetting of the Government with Germany, one of the signs of which was that the Allied blockade was not treated as a fact, while the mythical blockade by Germany was accepted as really existing.

Personally, I had respect for Dr. Hammarskjold, the Premier of the conservative cabinet that ruled Sweden in the beginning of the war. He was formerly a colleague in Copenhagen, and, with the exception of Francis Hagerup, now Norwegian Minister at Stockholm, he is the greatest jurist in Northern Europe. He is a Swede of Swedes, with all the traditions of the over-educated Swede. Neutrality he desired above all things – that is, as long as it could be preserved with honour; but he evidently believed that, for the preservation of this neutrality, it was most necessary to keep on very good terms with Germany. Hammarskjold's point of view was more complicated, more technical than that of Herr Branting, and it is to Herr Branting's raising of the voice of the Swedish nation that a serious difficulty with the Entente was avoided. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to put down Hammarskjold as pro-German, for he is, first of all, pro-Swedish.

Edwin Bjorkman, an expert in Swedish affairs, says, after he has paid the compliments of an honest man to the wretched Prussian conspiracies in Sweden: —

'For this German intriguing against supposedly friendly nations there can be no defence. For the more constructive side of Germany's effort to win Sweden, there is a good deal to be said, not only in defence, but in praise. It was not wholly selfish or hypocritical, and it was directed with an intelligence worthy of emulation. All the best German qualities played a conspicuous and successful part in that effort, – enthusiasm, thoroughness, systematic thinking and acting, intellectual curiosity, adaptability, and a constant linking of national and personal interests.'7

Men, like Hammarskjold, were naturally affected by an influence which no other nation condescended to counteract. Besides, as a good Swede, Hammarskjold knew that, in a possible conflict with Germany, Sweden had nothing to expect, in the way of help, from the Allies. The German propaganda had convinced many Swedes that it was England that deprived King Oscar of Norway with the view of isolating Sweden and assisting Russia's move to the sea.

The late Minister of Foreign Affairs, Herr Wallenberg, was regarded as a friend of the Entente, and was less criticised than any other member of the Government. Many of his financial interests were supposed to be in France, and he has many warm friends in all social circles in that country. He is a man of cosmopolitan experience. He has the reputation of being the best-informed man in Europe on European affairs.

Dr. E. F. Dillon, in one of his very valuable articles said: 'As far back as March 1914, he gave it as his opinion that the friction in the Near East would in a brief space of time culminate in a European war.' To Dr. Dillon the English-speaking world owes the knowledge of the points of view of certain activists, entirely under German influence, as expressed in Schwedische Stimmen zum Weltkrieg – Uebersetzt mit einem Vorwart verschen von Dr. Friedrich Steve. The real title is best translated Sweden's Foreign Policy in the Light of the World War. It was a plea for war in the interests of Germany, representing those of Germany and Sweden as one. They were anonymous – now that some of them have had a change of mind it is well that their names were withheld. They were evidently pro-Germans of all Swedish political parties. It may not be out of place to say that the papers of Dr. Dillon, such as those printed in the Contemporary Review, are documents of inestimable diplomatic-social value.

It was the leader of the Socialists, Herr Branting, who helped to make evident that a change had been slowly taking place among the Swedish people. Herr Branting is of a very different type from the generally received idea of what a Socialist is. He would not do on the stage. In fact, like many of the constructive Socialists in Scandinavia, he is rather more like a modern disciple of Thomas Jefferson than of Marx or Bakounine. He knows Europe, and he brings to the cause of democracy in Europe great power, well-digested knowledge, and a tolerance not common in Sweden, where religious sectarianism among the bulk of the people was as great an enemy to political progress as the Prussian propaganda.

The most influential man in Sweden, Herr Branting, was obliged to renew his formal adhesion to the Lutheran Church, which he had renounced, to hold office. The strength of Herr Branting's position, which has lately immensely increased, may be surmised from the fact that, in 1914, the Radicals gave 462,621 votes as against 268,631. The Government would have been wise to have heeded this warning in time; but the men who had engineered the Activist movement, who had worked the Swedish folk up to their demand for stronger defences and a greater army and navy, seemed to think that Sweden was still to be governed from the top.

The Swedes are not the kind of people who can be led hither and thither by bread and the circus. They know how to amuse themselves without the assistance of their Government and to earn their bread, too; but when the Government, through its presumably pro-German policy, seemed to be responsible for the curtailment of the necessities of life, they turned on their leaders and read the riot act to them. Sweden boldly defied Pan-Germanism.

A great day in Sweden was April 21st, 1917. It was a turning point in the nation's destiny. The people took matters in their own hands. Hjalmar Branting had forced the Swartz-Lindman Cabinet into a corner; no more secret understandings, no more disregard of the feelings of the voters who felt that, to help their nation intelligently, they must know what was going on. Appeals to Charles XII. or the shade of Gustavus Adolphus no longer counted. What Germany liked or disliked was of no moment to Branting.

On the first of May we were all anxious in Denmark. Our Minister at Stockholm, Mr. Ira Nelson Morris, understood the situation; he expected no great outbreak as a result of Branting's action in the Rigstag, revealing the existence of a secret intrigue to raise, on the part of the Government, a guard of civilians to protect the 'privileged classes,' as the Socialists called them, against disturbances on the part of the proletariat. Branting gave a guarantee that no tumult among the people should take place. Nevertheless, the German propaganda kept at work; the people were not to be trusted. On May 1st, the party in power protected the palace with machine guns and packed its environs with troops. It was a rather indiscreet thing to do, since Branting had given his word for peace, providing that the pro-German protectorate did not make war. On May 1st at least fifty thousand of the working classes, 'the unprivileged classes,' made their demonstration in procession quietly and solemnly. In the provinces, on the same day, half a million Swedes sympathetically joined in this protest against the pro-German attitude of the Government.

When we entered the war the ruling classes declared, either privately or publicly, that we had made a 'mistake'; they hinted that Germany would make us see this mistake – this out of no malevolence to America as America, but simply from a complete lack of sympathy with our ideals. It must be remembered that an aristocracy, a bureaucracy without privileges is as anomalous as a British Duke without estate. The French Revolution was a protest, as we all know, against vested privileges. When Madame Roland, the intellectual representative of a great class, was expected to dine with the servants at a noble woman's house, a long nail was driven into the coffin of privilege.

In Sweden the fight is on against the privileges which the higher classes in Sweden have expected Germany to help them conserve.

On October 19th a new cabinet was formed; the people demanded a Government which would be neutral. This was the result of the election in September. On this result – the first real step in the Swedish nation toward political democracy – they stand to-day. Unrestrained or uninfluenced by Prussia, the classes of Sweden who love their privileges, will accept the situation. The death-blow to the landed aristocracy will doubtless be the suppression of the majorats and the conversion of the entailed estates into cash. This seems to be one of the fundamental intentions of the new order. The classes who look to Germany as their model and mentor are now non-existent – naturally!

Germany allowed to the upper classes in Sweden no intellectual contact with the democracies of the world. The world news dripped into Sweden carefully expurgated. Her suspicions of Russia were kept alive as we have seen; the good feeling which existed in Denmark towards Sweden (due to the help the Swedish troops had given when they were quartered at Glorup, near Odense, in readiness to meet the Prussian attack in 1848) had been gradually undermined. While Sweden owed much of her suspicions of the other two countries to German influence as well as her fears of Russia, Denmark was confronted with a real danger.

Whatever progress Sweden has made towards democracy is not due to intelligent propaganda on the part of America or England. It needed a war to teach the Foreign Offices that diplomatic representatives have greater duties than to be merely 'correct' and obey technical orders.

German propaganda had little influence in Norway, but German methods have been used to an almost unbelievable extent in the attempt to lower the morale of this self-respecting and independent people. The German propaganda could get little hold on a nation that cared only to be sufficient for itself in an entirely legitimate way. The Norwegian can neither be laughed, argued, nor coerced out of an opinion that he believes to be founded on a principle, and he looks on all questions from the point of view of a free man thinking his own thoughts.

German propaganda, during the war, took the form of coercion. The ordinary influences brought to bear on Sweden would not be effective in Norway. Socialism seemed to be less destructive to the existing order of things in Norway than it was in Sweden, because it had fewer obstacles to overcome. It was against the Pan-German idea that the three Scandinavian countries should form the Northern Confederation dreamed of by Baron Carlson Bonde and others. When the late King Oscar of Sweden came under German influence – through all the traditions of his family he should have been French – he began to give the Norwegian causes of offence, and his attitude intensified their growing hatred of all privileges founded on birth, hereditary office, or assumption of superiority founded on extraneous circumstances. As we know, the form of Lutheranism accepted in Norway has little effect on the political life of the people, who, as a rule, are attached to their special form of Protestantism because of traditions (part of this tradition is hatred of Rome, as it is supposed to represent imperial principles) and because it leaves them free to choose from the Bible what suits them best. It is a mistake to imagine, as some sociologists have, that the Lutheran Church in Norway inclined the Norwegians to sympathy with German ideas. I have never, as yet, met a Norwegian who seemed to associate his religion with Germany or to imagine that he owed any regard to that country because 'the light,' as he sometimes calls it, came to him through that German of Germans, Martin Luther. In his mind, as far as I could see, there seemed to be two kinds of Lutheranism – the German kind and the Norwegian kind. I am speaking now of the people of average education – who would dare to use the phrase 'lower classes' in speaking of the Norwegians as we use it of the Swedes or the English? An 'average education' means in Norway a high degree of knowledge of what the Norwegian considers essential.

This shows that racial differences are much more potent than religious beliefs; and yet, in considering the problems of the world to-day, it would be vain to leave religious affairs out of the question, worse than vain – foolish. The Crown Prince of Germany, having studied the Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, knew this; the Kaiser, knowing Machiavelli, understood it too well. Lutheranism in Norway is not a political factor owing to the peculiar temperament of the people; therefore, Germany could not make use of it. With the intellectual classes, the independent thinkers, it has ceased to be a factor at all. Ibsen, who was in soul a mystic, is accused of leaning towards German philosophies even by some of his own countrymen; but there was never a more individualistic man than he.

In my conversation with learned and intellectual Norwegians, I discovered no leaning whatever to autocratic ideals. They were only aristocrats in the intellectual sense.

'Even our upper classes,' said a Swede, an ardent admirer of the ideas of the Liberal Swede, Count Hamilton, 'are changing. You ought to know our people as you know the Danes. A nation as plastic as ours, capable of breaking its traditions by making a king of Marshal Bernadotte, a person not "born" has great capacities for adaptation; and this is the reason why my country will not be divided between Germanised aristocrats and a Socialistic proletariat.'

This, after all, represents the essential attitude of the best in Sweden. That German ideals were propagated and well received by the ruling classes is true, but, to generalise about any country, simply because of the attitude of the persons one meets in society, is a mistake that would lead a diplomatic representative into all manner of difficulties.

To assume that Sweden could have been governed as Germany was governed, because German is the fashionable language among the aristocracy and the intellectuals, or because Sweden is Lutheran, or because the university and military education is founded on German methods, is too misleading. The Swedish folk are not the kind that would tamely submit to the drastic rule of the autocratic Hohenzollern.

The German attitude toward Norway was frankly antagonistic. There was no power there to persuade the citizens of that country that all kultur should come from above. The Norwegian is a democrat at heart. He believes, with reason, in the industrial future of his country; he understands what may be done with his inexhaustible supply of 'white coal'; he knows the value of the process for seizing the nitrates from the air. When he heard that supplies of potash had been discovered in Spain, a distinguished Norwegian said: 'Poor Spain! The Prussians will seize it now; but we should be willing to meet all the Prussian fury if we could discover potash in Norway!'