DESIRE TO AID FINNS

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 118, 12 February 1940, Page 9

DESIRE TO AID FINNS

Roosevelt Denounces Russia

(Received February 11, 8.40 p.m.)

NW YORK, February 11.

President Roosevelt, addressing the American Youth Congress, said: “Russia has a dictatorship as absolute as any other in the world. The United States’ sympathy is 98 per cent, with Finland.” He said that the United States desires to aid Finland. He ridiculed suggestions that Russia might declare war on the United States in consequence of this and described his own early interest in the Russian experiment in the hope that it would lead to the betterment of the nation. Mr. Roosevelt added: “That hope today is either shattered or put into storage against a better day.

“Russia is allied with another dictatorship and has invaded a neighbour so infinitesimally small that it could not injure the Soviet.” The President’s remarks were particularly pointed since the organization is filled with controversy concerning its refusal to denounce the Russian invasion of Finland and charges that its council is. Communistically influenced. President Roosevelt told Press representatives that he doubted whether the United States would sell guns directly to Finland because Finland was engaged in an armed conflict. The ’Washington correspondent of the “New York Times” says that a rising trend of Russian imports from the United States since the Finnish war began is revealed in an analysis of the trade figures for December. They were valued at 15.000,000 dollars —more than the quarter total in 1939, ini which the adverse Russian trade balance was 43,000,000 dollars. The accelerated purchases in 1940 are mainly for machinery and manufactured aeroplanes.