The average Swede is 5-ft. 7-in. tall, has blue eyes, sometimes grey. He is a predominantly Nordic type, has flat temples, prominent chin, lean jaws, thin mouth with long upper lip, sloping shoulders, shallow chest, slender waist, relatively short trunk, long legs. The hair texture is prevailingly fine, sometimes medium.
These are the conclusions of the world's leading anthropologists.
A Swede is one of the healthiest and handsomest physical types in the world. Politically and economically, he is mature, practical, cooperative. Psychologically, he is the victim of the national claustrophobia which torments all small European nations. Diplomatically, he intends to remain neutral during World War II, just as he did during World War I, and for more than 100 years before that. But there are limits. . . .
These conclusions came last week from six visiting U.S. newsmen* who have been Rover-boying Sweden since early April as guests of the Swedish Foreign Office. Their cabled stories in a rising Swedish-German crisis coinciding with German worries over Allied invasion plans, defined the point at which the Swedes will go to war.
Trolls in the Forests. Outward appearances last week placed the Swedes closer to a break with Germany than at any other time during the war. Sweden's stubborn insistence lifted a paralyzing four-month ban on overseas shipping through the Skagerrak. Angry notes passed over the sinking of two Swedish submarines Ulven and Draken, in Swedish territorial waters. The insult direct was implicit in the appointment of Baron Johan Beck-Früs as Minister to the exiled government in London of Norway's valiant old King Haakon.
These acts did not mean that the Swedes were deserting the proved practical worth of neutrality for what might now be suicidal warfare. Rather they demonstrated an awareness of the inevitability, of German defeat and a sickening sense of shame over Sweden's passivity while the Nazi trolls run wild in Norway.
In every clean-swept Swedish town and forest hamlet last week there were such demonstrations on Norwegian Independence (Eidsvol) Day as the North has never seen since Norway broke away from Sweden in 1905. Norwegian flags sprouted from Swedish flag poles. The Royal Opera gave a special performance of Peer Gynt. Crowds cheered the John Steinbeck play The Moon Is Down. In the Stockholm Concert Hall, Professor Nils Ahnlund promised that soon "the trolls will be hunted back into the woods." Then he spoke a truth that all Swedes, regardless of any onetime admiration or rationalization of Naziism, now freely admit:
"More than anything else, Norway has taught us Swedes what a profound difference separates us from the so-called European new order."
Troops on the Trains. The American correspondents found that optimists place the pro-Ally sentiment in "Swedes at 95%, and pessimists seldom drop the percentage below 90%. The correspondents also put their finger on the sorest spot in Sweden—the transport of Nazi troops over Swedish railways to Norway.