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domestic and the foreign. In my memorandum, I
took the attitude that the domestic post-war activities
should not be expanded, in any case not right away.
Our economic position would certainly be stronger
than that of the countries which suffered through
the war, and relatively speaking, the need for aid
within Sweden should therefore be small. We should
inform the Swedish government that the Red Cross
was prepared to be at its disposal to improve the
state of social hygiene in Sweden. But first of all
we should direct our efforts toward the assistance
of foreign countries, first our neighbors, and then
others in distress, in order to enable them to start
their reconstruction programs. The Swedish people
belong to a large international family. It seemed to
me that we ourselves could not feel happy in our own
homes if we did not know that the other countries
had made a little progress toward repairing the
enormous damage caused by the war. Only then
could we feel that we were entitled to think about
problems at home.
However, Swedish resources certainly would not
be so extensive that we could help all war-torn
European countries. In order to get really effective
results it would be necessary to concentrate our
efforts. Scattering our work over too large a field
would, in my opinion, only weaken our contributien.
The international work should be divided into two
areas, I advised, one comprising humanitarian help
to the civilian population, and the other concerning
the exchange of prisoners of war. The humanitarian
activity would primarily be concentrated on our
Scandinavian neighbors, on the Baltic countries, and
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