The Scandinavian treaty has no aggressive aims and is intended by the northern statesmen to cement unity among their countries and guarantee that this section of Europe definitely will be kept outside the theatre of the European war.
Originally the alliance system was formulated after the collapse of the League of Nations which left isolated, small states prey for any large neigh-hours. The alliance policy finally "won approval in Sweden as a result of the Russo-Finnish war.
Sweden and Norway learned in the Russo-Finnish war that a neutral policy would never be practical because it appeared that the northern States were about to be drawn into the general European conflict. This appeared inevitable should Finland accept Allied aid which would have to enter Finland through Norway and Sweden.
The announcement of plans for a military alliance culminated a long period of intense diplomatic activity in which Swedish officials tried to convince Finland that acceptance of Allied intervention would harm rather than improve conditions in the northern states, Swedish diplomats contended during these talks that an Allied war of intervention in the north would finally seal the Russo-German accord and probably bring about an outright military alliance between Moscow and Berlin, The northern states then would simply become a battlefield for Európean wars, Swedish diplomats contended, and probably would eventually lose their independence—United Press.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.