Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XIX. Sweden in 1915
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From that time the German Legation changed its
tactics; von Lucius only asked the Swedes for
friendship, sympathy, and services of an economic order which
would enable heroic Germany, whom the English wished
to starve (“Gott strafe England!”), to save her wretched
women and innocent children from dying of inanition
before her eyes. As the war continued and revealed
ever more and more its true and hideous aspect, as
Swedish public opinion was leaning more and more
towards the idea and the longing for a good European
peace, von Lucius revealed himself more and more as a
friend of peace—of an “honourable” peace, of course—for
his country. He suggested to the Swedes the idea of
striving for this peace so indispensable for humanity at
large; he drew a picture, most attractive to their
generosity, of Sweden as the initiator of world-wide
peace, of Stockholm as the place where the future peace
congress would be held.
Ah, well! in spite of all these exertions, all this
cleverness, von Lucius’s term of office in Stockholm was not
a success. He was too excitable, too much of a trickster.
There are some tendencies which at first are not
understood by certain societies or by certain persons, but
which end by shocking their natural instincts of frankness
and noble-mindedness. And then they become
suspicious. The methods of the German Legation could
not either in the long run appeal to honest people.
Agitation in the Press; attempts at extortion; enticing
away of young people to serve as spies in Russia or to
make attempts there to wreck munition factories or
means of communication—an enticement which usually
commenced with offers of honest employment; the
keeping up of active relations in Stockholm itself and in
the north with the Finnish revolutionaries, not at all
liked in Sweden; perpetual tales about contraband;
finally, a plethora of German agents and spies of both
sexes in Stockholm and all over the country; naturally
all this made the Swedish Government anxious, and
shocked public opinion, when actual facts came to their
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