into war. The mentality whence they spring cannot be discarded in a
year or a generation, nor will any Peace Treaty, however ingeniously
worded, prevent recourse being had to them in the future. For this,
among other reasons, more trustworthy guarantees than scraps of paper
must be sought and found.

CHAPTER IX

GERMAN PROPAGANDA IN SCANDINAVIA

The same breadth of vision and efficacy of treatment were similarly
rewarded in the Scandinavian countries, where German propaganda, ever
resourceful and many-sided, was facilitated by kinship of race,
language, folklore and literature. Of the three kingdoms Sweden, the
strongest, was also the most impressible owing to the further bond of
fellowship supplied by a common object of distrust--the Russian
empire. Suspicion and dislike of the Tsardom had been long and
successfully inculcated by the German Press, from which Sweden
received her supply of daily news, and also, as is usual in such
cases, by prominent natives who, in obedience to motives to which
history is indifferent, employed their influence to spread suspicion.
Sven Hedin rendered invaluable services in this way to the Kaiser and
the Fatherland, throwing the glamour of his name over a movement of
which the ultimate tendency was national suicide. Under the auspices
of a prussophile minority of Swedish politicians, a few of whom were
supposed to favour the establishment of an absolute monarchy like that
of Prussia, a clever campaign against the Tsardom was inaugurated.
Falsehoods were concocted, imaginary dangers conjured up and described
as real, and sinister Russian designs against the independence of
Sweden and Norway were invoked as motives for energetic action. In
vain the Tsar's Government protested its friendship for Sweden and
disproved the poisonous calumnies circulated by the Germans.

In the discovery and arrest of a number of Russian military spies, who
were as active in Sweden as in other lands, and whose relations with
the Tsar's Military Attache in Stockholm were said to be proven, these
agitators found the few solid facts that served them as the groundwork
of their fabric of suspicion and calumny.

The results of this propaganda answered the expectations of its German
and Swedish organizers. Despite the quieting assurances given by the
ex-Premier, the late Karl Staaff and M. Branting, Sweden's two
foremost statesmen, the present population was thoroughly alarmed.
They spontaneously taxed