CHAPTER VI
GERMAN DESIGNS IN SWEDEN AND NORWAY
As far as insinuating, mental propaganda was concerned, Germany, as I have said, had the advantage over 'Die dumme Schweden,' as the Prussians always called them. 'The stupid Swedes' were the easiest pupils of German world politics, but even the most German of the Swedes never realised, until lately, what the Prussian dream of world politics meant.
Before 1914, the Swedes had been led to believe that any general European difficulty would throw them into the hands of Russia. The constantly recurring difficulty of the Aaland Islands was before their eyes. Look at the map of Northern Europe and observe what the fortifying of the Aaland Islands by a foreign power means to Sweden. We Americans do not realise that the small nations of Europe have neither a Monroe Doctrine nor the power of enforcing one. And, so far as Sweden was concerned, her only refuge against the power of Russia seemed to be Germany.
When Austria made her ultimatum to Serbia, Sweden believed that her moment for sacrifice or triumph had come. In August 1914, all Scandinavia felt that the fate of the northern nations was at stake. For Sweden the defeat of Germany meant the conquest of Sweden by the Russians, for, sad to say, no little nation believed absolutely in the good faith of a great one.
The United States, where so many Scandinavians had found a home, what of her? Too far off, and the Swedish leaders of public opinion knew too well what had been the fate of the attempts at the Hague conference to abrogate the Machiavellian doctrines that have been the basis of diplomacy almost since diplomacy became a recognised science and art.
As for diplomacy, what had it to do with the fate of the little nations? Scandinavia, among the rest of Europe, looked on it as a purely commercial machine dominated essentially by local political issues. Our State Department had a few fixed principles, but all Europe believed that we were too ignorant of European conditions and, more than that, too indifferent to them to be effective. The slightest political whisper in Russia or the smallest hint from court circles in Germany was enough to upset the equilibrium of Scandinavian statesmen. American opinion really never counted, because American opinion was looked on as insular. A diplomacy labelled as 'shirt sleeve' or 'dollar' might delight those members of Congress who had come to Washington to complete an education not yet begun at home, but, from the European point of view, it was beneath notice. It cannot be said that the United States was not looked on, because of her riches and her size, with respect; but her apparent indifference to the problem on which the peace of the world seemed, to Europe, to depend, and her policy of changing her diplomatic ministers or keeping them in such a condition of doubt that they kept their eyes on home political conditions, had combined to deprive her of importance in matters most vital to every European. This is not written in the spirit of censure, but simply as a statement of fact.
The Swedes, the Norwegians, the Danes had flocked to our country. In parts of the West, during some of the political campaigns, my old and witty friend, Senator Carter, chuckling, used to quote:
'The Irish and the Dutch,
They don't amount to much,
But give me the Scan-di-na-vi-an.'