Norway, although it has often met the submarine of the Kaiser, which, defying all law, has sent to death so many Norwegian sailors and fishermen, suffers also from German propaganda and a certain self interest because of the forty-five million kronen sale of fish this last year to German buyers.
Germany works, too, in Denmark with the Socialists and deliveries of coal are used to obtain food from that country.
The jolly, free, brave Scandinavians are naturally opposed to all that Pan-Germanism and German rule means. It is necessary for us, especially our citizens of Scandinavian descent, not to lose this initial advantage.
CHAPTER XVII
SWITZERLAND—ANOTHER KIND OF NEUTRAL
Free Switzerland! You cannot imagine the feeling of relief I experienced as I passed from the lands of the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs to a free republic.
It was February 11, 1917. To go into the railroad station restaurant and order an omelette and fried potatoes without a food card and with chocolate on the side seemed in itself a return to liberty.
Our Minister, Mr. Stovall, gave us a dinner and evening reception so that we could meet all the notables and we lunched with the French Ambassador (for France maintains an Embassy in Switzerland) and dined with the British Minister, Sir Horace Rumbold, a very able gentleman who had been Chancellor of the British Embassy in Berlin before the war.
As war had not yet been declared between Germany and the United States the correspondents of German newspapers waylaid me. Some seemed to think that in spite of the insulting blow given us by Germany, we nevertheless, scared to whiteness by the U-boat ultimatum, would lend all our energies to bring about a German peace.