Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XV. Sweden in 1914
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a free, happy and comfortable life, allowing
themselves the luxuries of a beautiful capital and another
large commercial town in the west, Gothenburg, of a
pursuit of art carried to a high degree, of an elegant and
cultivated society, of a Court in which the setting and
ceremonies do not lack grandeur, and finally—more
expensive than anything—of an Army of which the real
value and irreproachable appearance are certainly far
superior to its equipment, but which nevertheless
represents an appreciable strength, and a certain weight
in the political balance of Northern Europe.
Naturally all this is not entirely the result of the wise
Swedish policy of the last hundred years. Many of the
things that one admires at the present time in Sweden
owe their origin to far older historic causes and to
the natural qualities of the people: more especially to
the latter.
Of an eminently pure race, the Swedes fully possess
the few failings and the great advantages of a people
who have developed in freedom on a land belonging
entirely to them and which has never been trampled by
other nations. And they fully bear the stamp of their
granite soil and of their climate with its icy blasts.
Slow and uncommunicative, but obstinate and sensitive,
capable of strong passions, more of an internal than
external nature, generally ingenuous but full of good
sense, sometimes genial and eminently honest—these
“big children,” good-looking, well set up and with
naturally graceful movements, carry about in the gaze of
their blue eyes the mirage of their dense and rugged
forests, of their calm lakes, of their clean wooden houses
always of the same dark-red colour, amidst the pretty
landscapes of Sweden, so green, so peaceful, so
unchanging.
First and foremost the Swede prizes his freedom
and his country. Among the Swedish nobility the
feeling of patriotism is particularly strong and rules all
inclinations and arguments. The events of the national
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