Silver Shield

In Swedish the word plan means both airplane and scheme. Last week there reached the U. S. from Sweden a strange story involving both.

Most of Sweden's best hospitals are in big cities on the coast; many of Sweden's population fall sick far inland, beyond high mountains. To get these unfortunates out, Sweden had three ambulance airplanes--until one of them crashed on the Lapland mountains in October.

When he heard about the accident, Germany's Field Marshal Hermann Goering, who, long before he got too paunchy to slide into a cockpit, served as a commercial pilot in Sweden, offered to make Sweden a present of a new, fully-equipped air-ambulance worth 450,000 crowns ($108,000). The plane was to be named for Goering's dead first wife Karin, sister of the wife of a Swede named Dr. Nils Silfverskoeld (Silver Shield).

Sweden's Government debated long over the proffered gift, then decided to thank the General just the same but not accept his offer. Whereupon General Goring became so enraged that the only thing that averted a complete diplomatic break was a hasty trip to Berlin by no less a person than King Gustav V, who pinned on Herr Goering's bulging chest the highest Swedish military honor--the Grand Cross of the Order of the Sword.

But that did not settle the matter. In the Riksdag a member named Herr Wallen (who just a short while before had an nounced himself the Parliament's first anti-Semite) arose and berated Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson on the matter of the plan (airplane). In the course of his harangue, Member Wallen let slip details about the plane which no one else knew and which showed that he had been talking with Nazis. The Prime Minister at once condemned the whole thing as a German plan (scheme) against Sweden's Left ist Government.

Few days later, in the Government newspaper Social-Demokraten appeared a strong tirade against General Goring, saying that it would be a fine thing for one of his planes to be saving lives in Sweden while others ended them in Spain.

The article brought an immediate call at the Foreign Office from German Minister Prinz Viktor zu Wied, who called it a gross insult on the person of the Field Marshal. The author of that gross insult, it turned out, was none other than the Knight of the Silver Shield--Nils Silfver skoeld, brother-in-law of Field Marshal Goering.

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