Three languages, three influences, fight for mastery in Finland. The official Russian, the language of the government; Finnish, now receiving a new lease of life; and Swedish, the language of those who once conquered and held Finland, and who so imposed their civilisation on the more ignorant Finns, that to-day Swedish is the language of the more prosperous classes and of most of the business men.
The women of Finland received the suffrage in 1906, all voting who are over twenty-four and who have been for five years citizens of Finland. Many women thereafter were elected to the Finnish parliament.
In two Scandinavian countries the women vote. Norway was the first sovereign state of Europe to give full citizenship rights to women. In 1913, all Norwegian women of twenty-five and citizens for five years were put on a voting equality with men, and the only positions under the national government for which women are not eligible are in the army and navy, the diplomatic and consular service and the Supreme Court.
The Danish women received the full franchise in 1915, but in aristocratic Sweden only the women paying income taxes have rights in the communal councils.
In 1908, in Norway, a law was passed providing that women doing the work of men shall receive equal pay.
Military service in all three northern nations is universal and compulsory.
Possibly on a "tip" from Berlin to a fellow autocrat, there occurred in February, 1914, an extraordinary political event, arranged and "accelerated" by the Government, when thirty thousand farmers, meeting in Stockholm for the purpose, marched in procession to the Royal Castle to address the King and tell him that they were ready to bear any extra taxes imposed for the purpose of providing for national defence.
Russia was the power particularly feared by Sweden who thought she desired to annex a part of Northern Sweden and Norway in order to get an outlet to the sea on the Norwegian coast.
But recent events in Russia have ended this fear and the only question for the Swedes is the same, one with which the whole world is faced—Kaiserism or Democracy.
Sven Hedin, the explorer, who was the leader in this movement for national defence, has appeared as a German propagandist so violent as to have become popular with the Germans. It is hard to understand why so intelligent a man should range himself on the side of autocracy. Now that the Russian danger, if danger there was, is past it is to be hoped that this celebrated man will be found in the ranks of those opposed to the autocracy which ordered the murders of many Swedish seamen.