Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XIX. Sweden in 1915
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about 1916; and my French and Italian colleagues had
but one secretary to help them up to the end! This is
one of the numerous examples of the superiority of
German machinery over that of the Entente from the
beginning of the war. Berlin realised at once that when
they were spending tens of millions of marks per day
in the war zone, they could and ought to spend a few
hundreds in making diplomatic work more thorough
and more profitable, by information and propaganda in
a neutral country as important as Sweden from her
geographical position.
Thanks to the untiring work of our collaborators,
Howard, Thiebaud, Tommasini and I were just able to
get through the most necessary part of our work; all the
same, at the beginning of the war and during the first
two years I greatly felt the want of collaborators in the
sphere of questions concerning the Press. It was not
till 1916 that the Legation ended by having a more or
less adequate service in this respect.
I regretted far less my complete powerlessness in
the difficult sphere of secret intelligence and of
counter-spying. These two important branches were, with us,
entrusted, just as in the Russo-Japanese war, to the
agents of the famous State Police, who carried it on by
the same clumsy and prejudicial methods that they were
accustomed to use in their counter-revolutionary work.
Consequently, I was glad not to have to associate with
these individuals and not even to know them. And
when I had to get confidential information for my own
guidance I could always apply to my allied colleagues,
whose agents were anyhow more honest and better
informed.
But I must return to Baron von Lucius. In his strictly
political work he displayed more shrewdness than his
predecessor. Whereas the latter had wished to press
the Swedes at all costs to declare war on Russia, Baron
von Lucius quickly understood that the greater part of
Sweden, and even of Swedish society, did not care to be
drawn into the perils and the enormous risks of war.
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