TRIUMPH OF WRONG

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 63, 14 March 1940, Page 11

TRIUMPH OF WRONG

BRITISH REGRET

ATTITUDE OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY

MENTION IN LORDS

(British Official Wireless.) (Received March 14, noon.) RUGBY, March 13. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, made a statement in ,the House of Lords on the Finnish peace similar to Mr. Chamberlain's. Lord Snell said: "Your Lordships will have heard the statement with mixed feelings—first a feeling of satisfaction that the physical agony of a small and almost miraculous kittle people has now ended, and secondly with regret that the spiritual injuries they have received will endure, and that right once more has been defeated and wrong has once more triumphed in the world. As far as the Finns are concerned, they may take comfort in the sympathy of all the free peoples of the world. They have done all that bravery and endurance could do. They have set a new standard of resistance against overwhelming odds and written a page of history that will be read with wonder through generations yet to come. We can only acknowledge and admire their indomitable courage and grieve with them in their defeat. "It must be a proud day for the Russian Empire," continued Lord Snell sarcastically, "with their 180.000.000 people, to celebrate the success of their attack upon a population which is less than that residing within the area of the London, County Council. I will not comment on the other Scandinavian nations, but I feel sure that if their own trial comes the events of recent weeks and months will not be forgotten."

Lord Samuel found consolatory satisfaction in the fact that the Soviet had been unable to impose any political terms on Finland. "The claim that the workers of Finland were only too eager to welcome the Soviet intervention," he said, "has been refuted by the gallantry of the Finns themselves, who inflicted appalling losses upon the Russians. M. Tanner this afternoon, according to reports just received, attributed the disaster which has fallen on his country to' the decisions of Sweden and Norway not to permit the passage of troops of the Allies. It is not for us to criticise or even to comment upon those decisions. Those countries know better than anyone else what were the limitations imposed by their own situation. Having reached those decisions, it would not have been possible for Britain or France to have overridden them. To have proceeded in the face of the protests of Sweden and Norway would have been a gross breach of their neutrality and a clear infraction of .international law."