GERMAN INFLUENCE ON THE NORTHERN NEUTRALS
Just as I had the opportunity to study conditions in Austria, so
also I came in contact with the politics and diplomacy of the
nations contiguous to Germany on the north.
My grandfather, Benjamin F. Angel, was American Minister to
Sweden and Norway and on leaving received from the King the Order
of St. Olaf. I have always taken a deep interest in Scandinavian
affairs and it behooves the American people to regard closely
what is happening nowadays in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
The outbreak of the European War in 1914 served to bring the
three northern nations close together. Their Kings met in
conference and a peace monument was erected on the boundary of
Norway and Sweden as if to proclaim to the world that in spite of
their recent separation, Norway and Sweden were sister countries.
The people of these three countries are of the same blood and
their languages are somewhat similar. Norwegian and Danish
written are practically the same. But there is quite a difference
in pronunciation. Swedish is more like German and the pronunciation
is not as difficult to learn as that of Norwegian and Danish. In
Norway, there are older dialects, differing from Danish, and
there has lately been a great movement in favour of a more national
language. Many Norwegians regard the official Danish-Norwegian as a
reminder of old subjection to Denmark and not at all fitted for
the new independent Norwegian kingdom. The new national language
is called "Landsmaal."
Sweden and Norway were both under one king from 1814 to 1905. In
that year after a peaceful secession, Prince Charles of Denmark,
the son of the King of Denmark, was made the King of Norway, with
the title of Haakon VII. Although both have kings, Denmark and
Norway may be termed democratic countries.
Copenhagen is lively since the war. The population of Denmark is
only 2,500,000 and the whole country is only 14,829 square miles,
which means an area about the size of Maryland. The country was
once larger but in 1864 Prussia went to war with Denmark and,
finally, after the war with Austria in 1866, added to the Crown
of Prussia the two Danish duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. As
the city and port of Kiel were included in this territory
annexed, it is easy to see why the Germans engaged in this
enterprise against Denmark.
Denmark possesses the Faro Islands which lie far to north of
Scotland, the great island of Iceland and Greenland, relics of
the times when the Viking ships brought such terror to the other
countries of Europe, that the Litany used to read: "From plague,
pestilence and famine, from battle and murder, from sudden death
and from the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us."
In Christiania we saw on our trip out two graceful Viking ships
dug out of the clay shores of the coast in a state of fair
preservation--one of them a Princess's ship on which it was easy
to imagine some blonde princess of the North, her long braids of
golden hair flying in the wind, urging on her Scandinavian
oarsmen.
The Danes are a sturdy race, the women more independent than
those of other countries. On the _Frederick VIII_, when we sailed
from Denmark, September 28, 1916, for the United States, were two
handsome girls, nineteen and twenty-one years of age, the
daughters of the proprietor of the largest department store in
Copenhagen. They were going to America to find employment in
department stores in the different cities of the country,
travelling entirely alone, and expected to return to Denmark
after a year's experience in America with many new ideas of
management and advertising for their father in Copenhagen. These
girls were wonderfully educated, speaking in addition to Danish,
French, German and English with hardly a trace of accent. They
lived a short distance out of Copenhagen and told me that every
morning of the year they jumped into the sea at six-thirty in the
morning, something that I should not care to do even in August in
that cold northern land.
Danish farmers learned early that in order to be prosperous they
must practise intensive farming. I believe that Denmark, which
even before the war enjoyed a high degree of prosperity, is the
only country in the world where there are pig sties steam-heated
and electric lighted while the farmer himself does not have these
luxuries.
Our farmers have much to learn from the farmers of Denmark both
in agricultural methods and in co-operation for the marketing of
products. The reclamation of the Danish moors in Jutland has made
surprising progress: it is in Jutland that a park has been
preserved in its primeval state--the Danish-American Park, bought
with money subscribed by Danish emigrants to America who
prospered in their adopted land.
Ever since the conquest of Denmark by Germany, there has been a
deep hatred of all things German in Denmark on account of the
treatment of those Danes, numbering between one hundred and two
hundred thousand, who were living in Schleswig and Holstein and
were unfortunate enough to be turned over as property to the King
of Prussia.
I found the Danes agreeable people. Of the same race as the
Germans, living like them in the dark North, this difference in
behaviour is perhaps accounted for by the fact that the Danes are
free, while the Germans are oppressed by the weight of an ever
present autocracy.
While the Danish people hate the Germans, officially Denmark is
careful to conceal this hate and even, apparently, to lean
towards the German side, through fear of the German troops, which
could easily overrun Denmark in thirty hours.
Denmark, during the war, received oil cake from America, which
was fed to cattle later sold to Germany. A great tonnage of fish
has also been sent from Denmark to Germany while salt and potash
have been imported. There is no question but that supplies of all
kinds and in great quantities have found their way across the
Danish border.
And the Danes have prospered enormously since the war. Many
people have become millionaires through the sale of food and
other supplies to the Germans. A great deal of this food supply
was sent in the form of canned meat, popularly known as goulash,
and so to-day whenever an automobile passes on a Danish road, the
small boys call out "goulash Baron," in the belief that the
occupant is a new-made millionaire, enriched by trade with
Germany.
It is hard for us to realise how far north the Scandinavian
countries lie. Christiania, the capital of Norway and in its
southern part, is in the same latitude as the south point of
Greenland; and is it not difficult to imagine a modern city
situated in Greenland?
In Christiania it is not fairly daylight in December until ten in
the morning and dark early in the afternoon. The ample water
power of Norway and Sweden furnishes electric light, a godsend in
the short dreary winter days.
* * * * *
Norway, in many respects, is one of the most advanced countries
in the world. Having been ruled by Denmark for four hundred
years, it was united to Sweden by the Treaty of Kiel, in 1814,
with the approval of all the Powers, but against the inclinations
of the Norwegians, who knew that they were given to Sweden to
compensate that country for the loss of Finland, annexed to Russia.
The ambitious Bernadotte arranged to govern Norway as king of
that country, which was theoretically to retain its independence
and be united to Sweden only through the personal rule of the one
monarch.
At this time, the Norwegian Constitution provided that no more
personal privileges should be granted and since then the progress
of Norway towards a real democracy has been rapid. It was the
conflict over the right demanded by the Norwegians to establish a
separate consular service that led to the dissolution of the
union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, Norway voting for
separation 368,211 to 184.
There are now no nobles in Norway. Shortly after the union it was
decided that those who had titles of nobility could hold them for
life, but that their descendants could not inherit.
Legislation for the protection of child workers, women, for
insurance, etc., is of an advanced character. For instance, no
child under fourteen is permitted to work and no woman for six
weeks after her confinement--women receiving full sick benefit
pay during this period. Many of the railways are state owned.
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."
There is no question but that, just as in Argentina, the Swedish
diplomatic pouch was in all countries at the service of Germany,
and that the orders to the German spies in Russia were sent by
this means. In fact, it is believed German prisoners in Russia
found their way to Petrograd, there to participate in revolution
and counter-revolution under orders sent through the Swedish
officials.
Smuggling is winked at and at Lullia on the Swedish coast near
the head of the Gulf of Bothnia great quantities of rubber, block
tin and oil arrive from Russian Uleaborg across the gulf.
The French wanted to send a consul to Lullia, but their request
was refused, doubtless because the Swedish authorities did not
care to have any official foreigners see this traffic.
Cleverest of all has been the work of the German financial
agents. Warburg, the Hamburg banker, is attached to the German
legation in Stockholm. So skilfully has he managed his task, that
Swedish firms and Swedish banks have been induced to take German
paper money, commercial paper and securities instead of gold, in
return for copper, rubber, tin, food, fats, wool and supplies and
in this way the Swedish business men, by the touch of self-interest,
have been made to favour Germany.
I confess that it is hard to bring about, but as each nation has
the right to choose with whom its citizens shall do business, we
must mercilessly blacklist those firms which assist Germany by
accepting, in lieu of the gold which would thus be drained from
Germany, what amounts to the promise of Germany to pay if
successful in war.
The Queen of Sweden, herself a German and an admirer of the
German Emperor, has great influence over her husband and the
Court.
At a time when she was visiting her family in Karlsruhe (for she
is a Princess of Baden) a reprisal attack made by Allied
aeroplanes narrowly missed the royal palace and, consequently,
the Queen. This has added to her prejudice against the Allies.
The Crown Princess of Sweden was a Princess of Connaught, the
sister of "Princess Pat," but she does not dare take any stand
against the anti-ally propaganda.
I am sure that President Wilson appreciates the gravity of the
situation and that means are being taken to place our position
not only before the Swedish people but those of Swedish birth and
descent in the United States whose influence should be brought to
bear on their friends and relatives in the old country.
The crew of every Swedish ship that lands here should be given
our viewpoint; every Swede who returns to Sweden should go as a
missionary--we must not permit Sweden, whose people are bound to
us by ties of blood and friendship, by the hospitality which we
offered to every Swedish immigrant, to be ranged among our
enemies by the German-admiring aristocrats of Sweden who by
birth, training and education are opposed to democracy, who hope,
if Germany wins, to gain as great an ascendancy in the government
as the Prussian Junkers possess in Germany.
* * * * *
The Finns who occupy that part of Russia nearest to Sweden have
quite a sympathy for the Swedes, Finland having been at one time
a part of Sweden. The races, however, are not the same. The Finns
are a Mongolian race and certain similarities of language make it
plain that the Finns and the Hungarians came from the same
mysterious place of origin somewhere in the great mountains and
highlands of Central Asia.
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.
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.