Evening Post TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1940. FINNS REJECT SOVIET HIGHER LIFE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 31, 6 February 1940, Page 8

Evening Post TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1940. FINNS REJECT SOVIET HIGHER LIFE

Obstinate and obdurate, the Finnish trade unions refuse to see the advantages of the freedom which Stalin is holding out to them. Even when the Soviet Government goes to all the trouble and expense of sending armies and of sowing Finland with bombs, the ungrateful Finns decline to see the graciousness of this Soviet gesture, and refuse to enter the apartment so temptingly opened before them with all its Moscow culture and all its promise of a fuller life. Grieved that these ignorant, uncouth Finns will not

come into his parlour, Stalin is operating his .world-wide organisation to put on record these evidences of Finnish barbarity. But the solid and stolid sons of Finland remain unimpressed. They cannot be coaxed to climb up to the high plane of Russian freedom; nor can they be coerced into compliance; they cannot even be bombed into it. Somehow or other, there has been, and continues to be, an appalling lack of faith, so far as adjacent Finland is concerned, in the intrinsic merits of the Soviet higher life. Hundreds or thousands of miles away, some people pant to enter the Russian fold; but not so the Finns. One of the biggest mustering drives on record is in progress between the Baltic Sea and the Arctic Ocean, but the Finns refuse to be mustered, and even prefer to be murdered. They face with resolution not only the affectionate bullets of the Soviet, but also the appalling rigours of a war on which, more than on any other war, climate and meteorology have

frowned.

Antipodeans whose visions of Russia have borrowed enchantment from distance will not easily forgive the Finns. Why should geographical proximity present such a firm barrier to entering upon the higher life? Has snow-blindness affected these Finns, or are they naturally short-sighted? Whatever be the cause, they neither repent nor relent; and Sir Walter Citrine sees in them "no signs of tiredness, hopelessness, or collapse." He and the British Labour delegates return from Finland with the statement that "everyone in Finland capable of bearing arms has been called to the colours" —summoned to the task of repelling what these sceptical Finns regard as Stalin's Greek gifts. Echoing resolute deeds with resolute words, the Finnish Federation of Trade Unions states:

The aims of the Russian invaders have no connection with the aims and objects of the trade unions. Thousands of trade unionists have taken up arms for this reason and have gone to the front. • We know the conditions under which Russian workers live. We have no desire to exchange ours for their slavery.

Sir Walter Citrine, who also must be ranked by Stalin among the persons outside the strict faith, assured the Finns that England would do her utmost to help within the structure of the League of Nations resolution. As these words were being uttered the British Government was calling on the trade unions to also do their utmost towards "a further vast expansion of armament and munition supplies." A tremendous man-power programme is being launched "behind the lines," and it is now evident-that estimates of the number of men it 'requires to efficiently maintain one soldier at the front are rising steeply.' The huge sacrifice of life that is being made to resist the higher life wished upon mankind by Stalin and Hitler is an anomaly which, if it is not self-explanatory, remains unexplainable. Meanwhile, ideologies notwithstanding, in countries nearest the fire the front is manned, and behind the lines "immense labour forces" co-operate to resist the new freedom and to retain all that is best in the old.