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public opinion with regard to the supposed Russian
peril, I am somewhat anticipating events. During the
first twenty months of the war the Swedish political
horizon was not always free from cloud, quite as much
in respect to Russia as to the Entente in general.
The Swedish Activists were agitating unceasingly,
and this agitation was fed, sometimes by the events of
the war, sometimes by the inconvenience to the country
caused by the strict blockade kept up by England,
sometimes finally by the famous question of the Aland
Islands which the Activists raised as soon as it was
necessary to warm up the anxiety of the country, and
which the Swedish Government itself held to be an
important question demanding a clear and distinct
solution.
The year 1915 began with a general impression of
successes for the Entente. In Galicia the taking of
Przemysl, and the vigorous offensive on the side of the
Carpathians, seemed to promise us at no distant date
the possibility of carrying the devastation of war and
decisive fighting right into Hungary; in Poland we
were still struggling fiercely with the German invader,
and Warsaw felt secure behind the trenches of the
Bzura, and the unflinching bulwark of our troops;
finally, in East Prussia our armies were still holding
their own on the shores of the Masurian Lakes, that is
to say in enemy country. Meanwhile, in the Caucasus
a brilliant and unhoped for victory of General Yudenitch’s
at once changed the situation: the Turkish troops, badly
beaten, no longer contemplated an offensive on Tiflis
and Baku; they themselves were attacked near the
Turkish fortress of Erzerum.
This military position of Russia was certainly not
advantageous to the propaganda of Swedish Activists.
“This was the fate in store for us!” one of my neutral
colleagues heard an earnest member of the Swedish
Conservative party say when Stockholm heard of the
decisive defeat of the Turks and our of advance in Armenia.
However, the friends, or rather the admirers, of Germany
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