A midnight flight to Sweden, with a motley horde of scared Russians and Scandinavians, and two weeks in the distressed and anxious northern countries ended my year. Nothing but the war; regiments of flaxen-haired Danish boys, mobilizing along the country roads of Denmark, the _Landsturm_ lolling along the Stockholm streets, even the Norwegians drilling against none knew what possible attack. The heavens had fallen. An interview with Herr Branting, the Swedish Socialist leader, and the depth of his personal feeling and the moving eloquence with which he went over the wreck of socialist and humanitarian hopes, gave us the vividest sense of the reverberations of the shock on a distinguished cosmopolitan mind. The librarian of the Royal Library in Copenhagen, the pastor of the Swedish church, and the editor of “Dagens Nyheter,” in Stockholm, whom we were able to talk with, very kindly answered our questions on Scandinavian affairs. And we have the pleasantest memories of Herr Hambro in Christiania, editor of the leading Conservative daily, who had just finished La Follette’s autobiography, and would have preferred to talk about America even to showing us how the Radical parties in Norway were lording it over their opponents. One got the sense in these countries of the most advanced civilization, yet without sophistication, a luminous modern intelligence that selected and controlled and did not allow itself to be overwhelmed by the chaos of twentieth-century possibility. There was a mood of both gravity and charm about the quality of the life lived, something rather more Latin than Teutonic. This is an intuition, reinforced by a sense that nowhere had I seen so many appealing people as on the streets of Copenhagen. Valid or not, it was the pleasantest of intuitions with which to close my year. This sketch, I find, has, in fact, turned out much more impressionistic than I intended. But impressions are not meant to be taken as dogmas. I saw nothing that thousands of Americans have not seen; I cannot claim to have brought back any original contribution. There was only the sense of intimate acquaintance to be gained, that feeling of at-homeness which makes intelligible the world. To the University which made possible the rare opportunity of acquaintance with these various countries and cultures, the contact with which has been so incompletely suggested in this sketch, my immeasurable thanks! TRANS-NATIONAL AMERICA