SlR,—Just in case Mr. Desmond Fennell has given some of
your readers the idea that Sweden is full of neurotics and Communists in embryo, I should be grateful if you would let me erase that misguided impression from their minds and defend the Swedes from what I thought a very unfair comment on their integrity as a neutral nation.
Mr. Fennell says that 'if the Soviet Union wins the war and some sort of a world survives it, a people's democracy will have been declared in Stockholm while the radioactive dust is still settling.' He seems to have seen right through the Swedes, in this particular instance, and looked at his own fears without taking into consideration the general Swedish abhorrence of Communism. No Swede will ever deny that he loves to belong to the country with the highest standard of living in the free world and that his affinities lie far closer to Western ideologies than Eastern ones. In addition to that, it does not need a wild imagination to see the Socialist reign ending (not that it is very far Left even now) and a Right-wing government in power within five years. Neither are industrialists so short-sighted as not to see that their continued prosperity depends upon their close ties with the West being kept and tightened.
Should the day ever break—may God forbid— when radioactive dust settles on Stockholm, no sur- viving Western nations need fear betrayal by Sweden just because she has a passion for being on the winning side. The Swedes like success and they know its sweet smell better than most but they are not so bigoted as to believe that if Communism happened to be on the winning side, they would like its bitter stench.
I do hope that if this was only Mr. Fennel's interim report, his final assessment will reflect a more tolerant and infinitely more correct view of Sweden as a nation looking, even if not going, West.
N. C. FRET%VELL
33 Elmstead Gardens, Worcester Park, Surrey
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