A Shock for Sweden
The first feeling towards Sweden inspired by the incident on Monday in which a Swedish aircraft was deliberately shot down over the Baltic by two' Russian fighters is one of sympathy. It is bad enough that the Russians should insist on .a 12-mile limit to their territorial waters. It is worse that they should treat any approach to that limit from the out- side (the Swedish pilot says that he was miles outside it when attacked) as an excuse for a deliberate and murderous assault. It is worse still that the Swedish aircraft was engaged on a rescue mission, of which the Russians had been informed and in which they had been invited to participate. This is far fwm being the first example of the sheer barbarism displayed by the Russian air force when it comes in contact, by accident or design, with the aircraft of other countries. Other planes have been shot down over the Baltic without warning. But there can seldom have been a worse case, and it is easy to understand the indignation which the news has aroused in Sweden—particularly when at this very time seven Communists 'are being tried at Stockholm for espionage. And as to the Russian statement that the aircraft in question was over Russian territory, that it refused to obey signals to land, and that it fired' on the Russian fighters, it can only serve to produce further exasperation in Sweden. Does not the whole history of Russo-Swedish relations since the war display an almost pathological anxiety on the part of the Swedes not to give offence ? Sweden has suffered as much as any neighbour of Russia from the steady pressure of a war of nerves. What is hard to understand' is the deliberate refusal of the Swedish Government to realise that there is no such thing as neutrality in the cold war. How many more attacks must be made, spies set to work, diplomatic threats delivered, insults given when explanations are sought, before Sweden learns to distinguish her friends from her enemies ?
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