Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XIX. Sweden in 1915
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(4) Russia and Germany were to conclude a political
and commercial alliance in which France might find a
place, but of which the point would be specially directed
against English encroachments.
(5) In the event of these proposals being favourably
received, Russia was to send two or three first-class
financiers to Malmö to meet some great German
financiers to discuss the conditions of peace together in
greater detail.
I took care to transmit a copy of this statement to
our Foreign Office, after having thoroughly warned the
person who had shown it to me that I felt sure and
certain beforehand that we should reject all proposals
of separate negotiations unknown to our Allies. As I
expected, there was no sequel to this German attempt,
so far as our country was concerned. I heard later that
at the same time Germany had made overtures to the
Danish Court to bring about a conversation with Russia.
These overtures had the same negative result.
From this moment, according to what I gathered
from reliable sources, several attempts were made to
bring about separate conversations first with Russia,
then with England. Attempts were also made by
Turkish representatives with their Japanese colleagues
(whom they were able to see as a state of war did not
exist between Turkey and Japan). Then Stockholm
witnessed the arrival of the famous “Ford Peace
Troupe.”
In Sweden the pacificist current made special
progress from 1915 onwards, and the Court and the Royal
Government lent it, if not their actual help, at least
their most sincere sympathy. M. Wallenberg, in
particular, was animated by the impulse to put an end to
the acute state of Europe, of which the results would be:
the exasperation of national antipathies, awful material
ruin, and the placing on the order of the day the most
dangerous and most insolvable social problems. It was
this pacificist current that checked the renewal of warlike
tendencies occasioned by the German successes of 1915.
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