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Show uu Great Britain Seeks to Force the Hand of Swedish Government. "Washington, Jan. 23. Sweden may join the list of smaller nations fighting fight-ing upon the side of the central empires em-pires within a week, according to information in-formation which reached Senator Albert Al-bert B. Fall of New Mexico tonight through private sources. Declaration of war will be made upon Great Britain Brit-ain and on Russia, Senator Fall's advices ad-vices state. Actual hostilities, it is understood, will be begun with an attack on Russian through Finland. "The real reason for Sweden's declaring dec-laring war," explained Senator Fall, "will be found to lie in the repeated efforts of Great Britain to force Sweden Swe-den to do this very thing. However great bitterness against Russia may be in Sweden, recent developments in the British blockade of Sweden have aroused the Swedes to an even more bitter hostility against England. From the outbreak of the war Sweden has been actively favorable to Germany and has done everything In her power pow-er to aid Germany. "This friendship with Germany has been due less to any inherent feeling feel-ing of kinship than to a fear that If the allies win Sweden will stand in flnnror nf rnnmifRf rrf- Hip hfinrls nt a victorious Russia. The wrongs suffered suf-fered by Finland under Russian rule have given rise to the belief in Sweden Swe-den that Finland would offer no resistance re-sistance to the passage of Swedish troops through Finland heading for an attack on Russia. "This antipathy against Russia has been capitalized recently by Great Britain, whose difficulties over the matter of the so-called illegal blockade block-ade of neutral ports have given her no inconsiderable uneasiness. Within With-in the past three months some member mem-ber of the British cabinet awoke to the fact that If only war could be provoked between Sweden and Great Britain the whole matter of the sea blockade would straighten Itself automatically. auto-matically. "With war existing between the two countries, Great Britain could announce an-nounce and make effective a blockade block-ade of Sweden which would in effect close the Baltic and make it an inland in-land sea. The Skagerak is territorial water, being less than six miles in width. Danish territory extends out from shore three miles on one side and Swedish territory for three miles upon the other. An English blockade of Sweden would thus automatically seal the entrance to the Baltic "My Information that war is imminent immi-nent comes from a reliable source and all the facts seem to make it more than probable." |