Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1941-03-11
Swedish Reporter Here on Way
To Cover Her Fourth War

wv HiFt'tS
Going 5000 Miles
To Get There
Barbra Alving hates war. but as
long as there are wars and she is
a newspaper reporter that's the
place to be-"
The current place to be" for
Mrs. Alving is London. Her news
paper, the Dagens Nyheter of Stock
holm has sent her about 5000 miles
to set there
She couldn't go through German
dominated countries because of the
stories she's written To get to
London. she sailed for the United
States in February from Petsamo,
on the northern tip of Finland.
Now the 32-year-old foreign cor
respondent is in Washington, await
ing transportation to England, and
keeping her hand in by writing what
she sees here. The Senate on Satur-
day afternoon, for instance, a few
hours before passage of the lease
lend bill she compared to the Swed-
ish Parliament in the Springtime,
when all the members want to get
away on vacation.
Saw War in Madrid MOrgue.
Mrs. Alving met war head-on for
the first time in a morgue in Madrid
after the first commandment She
had covered only one other foreign
asSignment-the Olympic games in
Berlin in 1886.
They hadn't had time to build
coffins," she said. They just threw
boards together. Lying in one of
those boxes at the entrance was
10-year- old boy. I could bet my life
his pockets were still full of all the
little things 10-year-old boys keep
in their pockets. From the neck
down, he looked so terribly alive.
He had no head.
In the other wooden thing was
baby girl, pale and dignifed but
dead all right. When I saw those
two kids, I cried"
Mrs. Alving makes no pretense of
being hardened to war. In the
Finnish war it was the small things
that show the soul of that people"
She saw the children helping each
other and she cried.
One Never Gets Used to BOmbings.
People" she commented, SAY one
gets used to being bombed. That's
not true. One gets used to dis
ciplining ones self. But every time
you know the bombs are coming,
there's the same old shivering all
over and nerves clicking inside you.
You light cigarette and don't pay
any attention to the bombing, but
you get just as pale inside as the
first time it happened. People ar
range themselves inside to take it,"
Mrs. Alving doesn't like to talk
about the hardships of being for
eign correspondent. She says it
sounds like Boosting. But as she
talks about the wars, she recalls the
coolest place she was ever in-not
Finland, but the floor Of an Office
in Madrid, where she slept for II
nights on newspapers-unable to
undress or take bath.
Then there was Norway, where, on
occasion, she walked as much as four
hours, dragging her typewriter along.
Saw a British Landing.
"Once across the frontier from
Sweden she said, you asked the
good Lord to send something to
take you further"
1t might be a peasant in his cart
or an ambulance or rider on horse
back. Otherwise, she just started
walking. On one of her forays into
Norway she saw the British landing
at Namsos. Nobody knew they were
going to land there. She just "hap-
pened' to be the only reporter on
the spot.
After Norway, it was impossible
for her to go anywhere, she said.
Germany sat on everything and
Germany was cross with me-"
But she was sent to cover the
election of the new Finnish Pres
ident and walked into a story so
dramatic that, telling about it, she
laid down her ever-present cigarette,
swallowed gulp of coffee and MUIR
INJURED over and over again, What
story"
"Kallio (the outgoing President)
was leaving Helsinki and everybody
wanted to give him a decent fare
well. He was very nice old man
and they loved him Nights are
very black in Finland and they had
lighted torches for him along the
way to the station So he drove
to the station with his old wife
and Field Marshal Mannerheim and
the new President were there to
meet him.
Climax.
"The guard of honor was playing
the song it had played all during
the war. Kallio walked into the
station and then he fell down and
died. I couldn't have made a more
dramatic situation. What a story!"
Two months after her second visit
to Spain, to check up on how the
war was going, a daughter was born
to Mrs. Alving.
BetW cen the Spanish war and
the meeting of Hitler and Cham
berlain at Godesberg, which she
also covered, Mrs. Alving reported
the wedding of Crown Princess
Juliana in The Hague, the corona
ton of King George in London,
Mussolini's meeting with Hitler in
Munich, and the September crisis"
In Prague