THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REG IS TERED A S A N EW S PA P E R

VOL. 174 No. 5195

LONDON, DECEMBER 2nd, 1939

SIXPENCE

IN THIS ISSUE

CHRISTMAS BOOKS SUPPLEMENT

TH E HOUR OF DARKNESS

By Christopher Dawson

FOOD FOR THE GERMAN MIND

By Our Central European Correspondent

NEUTRALITY AND “PROPAGANDA RESISTANCE”

An Examination of an American Editor’s Advice

Full List o f Contents on page 624.

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK Sweden 1914 and 1939

The Nazi campaign against Britain may be said to have started where the indiscriminate U-boat warfare o f the last war left off, and the attitude o f the northern neutrals, who are principally affected, is strikingly different this time. Sweden, a particular sufferer, has been driven to threats o f reprisals against Germany, which could take the very effective form o f a withholding o f Swedish exports. In the last war, Sweden was a principal source o f supply to Germany ; Czarist Russia was Enemy Number One, and Sweden accordingly leant to the German side. Readers o f Admiral Consett’s work, The Triumph o f Unarmed Forces, will recall his disclosures o f how very nominal the British blockade was until 1917. Sv/eden suppressed all official statistics, there was no proper consular supervision from the Swedish ports, and much th a t was consigned nominally to Russia via Finland, came back by night and went to Germany. I t is an effective illustration o f the character o f the Nazi regime that there is hardly any sympathy in Sweden for Germany today. Soviet Russia is a much worse enemy than Czarist Russia, and if the Nazis had only been a little less violent, lawless and m enacing; above all, if they had not so recklessly sacrificed the lesser Baltic States to the Soviet, there would still today be a strong pro-German element in Sweden. But what the record of the regime had begun, the methods o f German naval warfare will complete.

In the last war Sweden was classed as pro-German, Norway as pro-Ally, and it was taken as an axiom th a t the two Powers would never work together, and th a t the memory o f Norw ay’s successful secession in 1905 had embittered relations between them. Today we are thoroughly accustomed to the conception of the Oslo Powers acting together, o f a common policy in the north as in the Balkans ; the Communist and Nazi dangers are today so real th a t little frontier disputes or historical antipathies are luxuries in which the smaller countries cannot afford to indulge. To all o f them the War is a perilous time, they have never had to live so dangerously as in the twenty years since the last peace, and there is a widespread welcome for every indication from Britain that there is no intention o f repeating the structure and mistakes o f the Versailles Settlement. Certain and Hypothetical Dangers

There is one point a t which German propaganda meets with an immediate response among the smaller neutrals. The argument th a t a long war o f exhaustion will only prove to the profit o f Bolshevism, meets with wide acceptance, particularly in Holland and Belgium.

But the Dutch and the Belgians also know better than anybody how very uneasily the whole continent would live if an uneasy armistice was agreed upon before the immediate Nazi menace had been removed.

I t would be the height o f folly to incur the certain evil of such a temporary arrangement in order to insure against the hypothetical evil of Communism on the Rhine. The Allied War effort, slower in starting than the German, will continue to gather strength for at least a year, and will remain a t a maximum for several years after that time. While neutral nations, including the Soviet, will no doubt increase their armaments, there is nothing like active participation in a war for bringing about a real mobilization o f resources, and the British and French empires will be much stronger in the international field in war than in peace. The Strength of Scandinavia

Leningrad is in peril from ferocious Finns, and the Soviet prepares to strike in strict self-defence. The writing on the wall is plain enough to Norway and Sweden.

Norway has under three million people, Sweden has ju s t over six ; the two countries were under one Crown th roughout the nineteenth century, and today their interests bind them together ju s t as Britain and France on a larger scale act as one Power. The Swedes went