Face to Face with Kaiserism

by James W. Gerard

Norway is a land of little farms, the shipping and fishing industries occupy many men, but with the exception of the water power driven nitrate plants, on the coast, and the wood-pulp factories, there is little manufacturing.

The mass of the people are with the Allies. Last winter, when it was proposed that a German concert troupe should play and sing in Christiania, the people threatened to burn the theatre if the performance was permitted.

But, as in Sweden, the German propagandists are at work in Norway. Here again, unless we present our case, the people may be turned from the Allies.

King Gustavus V, who occupies to-day the throne of Sweden, has a German wife. All the sympathies of the court, which copies the little courts of Germany, of the aristocracy and of the army are strongly with Germany.

In Sweden, although the king has not much more power than the kings of Denmark and Norway, there is an aristocracy which inclines to imitate the manners of the German aristocracy and to seize, if possible, the privileges enjoyed by that body. The officers in the army in Sweden are devoted to German ideals and, since the war, great bodies of them have been invited to Germany, where there has been much ado over them.

The people, however, do not sympathise with Germany, knowing what the triumph of Germany means for them and how the court and the army and the aristocracy would be thereby encouraged to put the Swedish people in what the Germans would call "their place."

The Swedes fear the domination of Germany and the domination of an aristocracy and army imbued with German ideas. They know that if Germany wins, the king business will take on a new lease of life. The ground was ripe for the Allies but the German propaganda, cleverly managed, spending money without stint, is gradually bringing the people to a point where, if the blockade is tightened, they may consent to Sweden's entering the war as an ally of the Central empires.

In spite of the dislike of the people for the German cause, I think that the aristocracy and the court and the army would have forced Sweden into the war but for one thing. After some months of war, an arrangement was made whereby the so-called "heavily wounded" were exchanged with prisoners between Russia and Germany. The German who was a prisoner of the Russians and had lost an arm or a leg, was sent home. These wounded prisoners on their way to their home countries, were compelled to travel the whole length of Sweden and it was the sight of these poor stumps of humanity, as the trains stopped at the various stations in Sweden, that kept the Swedish people out of war. Many pictures of them printed in the Swedish papers caused profound dismay in Sweden and developed an inexpressible abhorrence of war.

Since hostilities commenced, on the other hand, the Government, army and aristocracy of Sweden not only have been consistently opposed to the Allies, but of the utmost service to Germany.

Swedish iron ore goes into German cannon and makes the best steel for aeroplane engines, and the imports into Sweden from America of foods and fats from America increased one thousand per cent almost immediately. These imports, with great quantities of copper and other supplies, found their way to Germany to the great profit incidentally of Swedish business men. For the plain people of Sweden the cost of living increased without a corresponding increase in salaries and wages, so that the new prosperity was confined to the "goulash barons."