IF FINNS HOLD OUT TILL SNOW MELTS

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 87, 6 January 1940, Page 9

IF FINNS HOLD OUT TILL SNOW MELTS

Worse Trouble Predicted

For Russia ENGLISH AUTHOR’S VIEW if the Finns can hold out till the snow melts early in April they will smash the biggest army Russia can put in the field. That is (lie opinion of Dr. Halliday Sutherland, a noted English author, who is speliding a holiday in New Zealand. “I was in Finland ami Lapland two and a half years ago,” Dr. Sutherland said yesterday, "and I am one of the few people who are not surprised at the strong Finnish resistance to the Russian menace. I found that every Sunday, winter and summer, from 2 p.m. to S p.m., the White Guard, 100.000 strong, and equipped with uniforms and skis, practised musketry in the forests, in readiness lor the Russian attack which they knew would come. “The Finns knew also that the Russians would move in the winter, when the rivers and lakes are frozen, because Finland’s eastern frontier in the summer is simply a swamp. They were waiting for word on the. radio that the Russians had marched so they could.ski to the point of attack. This they have done. Hatred of Russia.

"The Finns hate the Russians as they hate the devil, for the Finn knows and detests Russian rule. They cannot forget the period from 180 S to 1918 when Finland was under Russian domination ■ —a period when Russia suppressed the Finnish language, suppressed Finnish justice, abolished the Finnish Parliament which had exjsted for 400 years, when Finland was a province of Sweden, and did away' with the Finnish army.” Dr. Sutherland recalled the turmoil in Finland following the Russian Revolution in 1917, when Germany, at Finland’s request, sent troops in to quell the revolutionaries, and when Britain made the mistake of intervening on the pretext of Mr. Lloyd George that “when Germany was imposing her will on neutral nations it was England's business to intervene.” That was

not correct, said Dr. Sutherland, as the German troops, under Ludendorff, had been asked for by a Finnish Government elected by a two-third majority of the people of the country. There was no fighting on the part of the Essex regiment sent to Murmansk by Britain, and the Finns could not understand why they were there. Will Never Surrender.

“Today Finland’s battle for intellectual freedom is being fought in the dim twilight of the Arctie night,” Dr. Sutherland said. “The Finns will never surrender because they have an inbred hatred of the Russians, whom they regard as barbarians and an Asiatic race.

“The Finn.? are not only fighting for their independence, but for something much greater. The objectives of Russia in the Baltic are first, the valuable nickel mines in Lapland, secondly, the Swedish iron mines, ami, thirdly, the Norwegian port of Trondhjem, on the Atlantic. All of these objectives were well known to every intelligent Finn three years ago and are also well known to the British Foreign Office. For that material reason the British Empire should assist Finland to the limits of her power. “Finland has shown also that in (lie world today the moral idea has a value. In the Middle Ages men talked of the heart of a lion; in the twentieth century men and women will speak of the heart of a Finn.”