How Sven Hedin, Pro-Prussian, Fooled Britain

Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 1164, 3 November 1917, Page 7 (Supplement)

How Sven Hedin, Pro-Prussian, Fooled Britain

English reviewer, discussing a book whose subject is Dr Sven Hedin, the Swedish geographer and traveller, an( ' n °t ol 'i° us pro-Prussian, recalls vvl Y.cvH?' how the British nation once lost its head over that precious individual. It was after Sven Hedin, in the dress of a pilgrim, had penetrated to Lhassa and explored the sources of the Indus and the Brahmapootra, He was welcomed by the Western world like a

Royal personage. The commentator adds: — "From Japan he passed to Russia, where he was so obliging as to tell a huge audience in Moscow that the British were loathed in Lhassa, and to advise the Russians to push for Tibet. None the less, his reception in England was prodigious: he was received by the Sovereigns, Oxford and Cambridge showered honours on him; on February 17, 1009, at Edinburgh (to cries of 'Hear, hear!' and 'laughter'), Sir Archibald Geikie congratulated him on 'not having any ollicial connection with the

British Government.' His books were issued in large editions, though they were dull to read; vast audiences collected to hear him, though he lectured badlv. Finally he was made, apparently in a class by himself, like the phoenix, an 'Hon. K.C.1.E.,' a knighthood unrecognised bv Burke or Debrett. (The case of Sir Frithjof Nansen is not analogous, for he is a real and full G.C.V.0.) In short, the British nation had one of its lits of frantic lionhunting, and allowed l)r Sven Hedin to fool it to the top of his bent."