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expulsion of the delinquents. Yet among this crowd of
traffickers there were some men who possessed money
and were accustomed to trade. These people quickly
amassed considerable fortunes without indulging in
illegal practices. Later on one heard of their doing a
great deal of good for their compatriots who came to
take refuge in Sweden after the Revolution.
Beside these “commercial amateurs,” and often
mingling with them, there were other groups of elegant
gentlemen who hardly ever left the lounges and the
restaurants of the smart hotels, tossing down bottles of
champagne and proclaiming loudly that they were
commissioners of the Russian Government for the purchasing
or ordering of such and such goods. But it hardly
required a practised eye to discover in them the agents
of our famous State Police, become secret-service and
counter-spy agents. But as these gentlemen always
ended by compromising themselves or by being guilty of
some knavish trick or other—if they did not begin that
way—they were sooner or later escorted by the Swedish
police to the frontier of Finland. In two or three
cases—at the entreaty of those who were interested in them
and on the recommendation of people I knew—I thought
it my duty to intercede with the Swedish Government
and to solicit the repeal of the sentence of expulsion.
But each time it was proved to me by evidence that the
individual in question was either a rogue or a thief. So
that in the end I did not interfere anymore in these cases.
The German spies that swarmed in Sweden were
guilty of fewer personal “indelicacies.” But they
infested the hotels, enticing young Swedes into doubtful
callings; opening what were in effect recruiting offices
in the north into which Finns were lured, who were
afterwards sent to Germany to form whole battalions;
arranging expeditions the object of which was to cut
such and such a means of communication in Finland.
And they did all this under the benevolent eye of
subordinate Swedish officials—inaccessible to bribery, but
permeated with German sympathies!
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