CONFERENCES: Egg into Cake?

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Sweden last week took a long step away from the dogged isolationism that has kept her out of the 20th Century's two great wars.

As recently as last September the Swedes were resolutely avoiding any approach whatever to the joint defense of Scandinavia. Last week, however, Sweden's Defense Minister, Allan Georg Frederik Vougt, was in Oslo, Norway's fog-shrouded capital, to discuss with his Danish and Norwegian opposite numbers the beginnings of military collaboration—standardization of arms and training. The fact that the Norwegians and, to a lesser degree, the Danes, looked on Scandinavian defense as a part of Western European defense made Sweden's presence all the more significant.

"This meeting makes history," said Minister Vougt, a bluff, 53-year-old ex-newspaperman. "Never before has the joint study of northern defense reached such concrete form."

No one expected Sweden to plump immediately for full cooperation. Norwegians and Danes were looking forward to a time when, as one observer put it, Sweden's power could be folded into a West European defense system "carefully, like the beaten white of an egg into a cake mixture."