VAST REFUGEE PROBLEM

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 9 January 1940, Page 5

VAST REFUGEE PROBLEM

FINNS IN INTERIOR 400,000 CIVILIANS QUARTERED CO-OPERATIVE SPIRIT EXISTS LONDON, Bth January. The Helsinki correspondent of “The Times” says that 400,000 refugees are quartered in farm-houses, public buildings and schools. Ninety thousand people, half of them from the Karelian Isthmus, occupy the houses, where there exists the cooperative spirit which animates the soldiers in the front line. At present food is plentiful, but it may not last. The Kuopio district, of 27,000 square miles, contains 80,000 child- ! ren, women, sick and aged. Bishop Sormunen, when the evacuation choked the roads, ordered the churches to be opened and heated as places of refuge. Epidemics hitherto have been avoided. The Church plays a noble part in the relief work. Thirty thousand of Lapland’s population of 100,000 are refugees, and the remaining 70,000 accommodate them. j RETURN TO BERLIN FOR FRESH INSTRUCTIONS HEAD OF DELEGATION TO RUSSIA Though the Germans are saying that trade negotiations with Russia are proceeding satisfactorily, the head of the delegation, Dr. Ritter, has returned to Berlin for fresh instructions, and he is reported to have had long conversations with Herr von Ribbentr ,p. Two nt the problems to be solved rre how the goods are to be transported, and how German industry, which is already strained to the utmost, ran hi) the Russian orders. Transport difficulties are serious, caused mainly by the difference ,n the’ gauges of the German and Russian railways. The Germans have a standard gauge. The Russian is 3Jin wider. One plan to overcome the difficulty was to lift the German wagons from their chassis at the Russian frontier and put them on Russian chassis. This plan, however, was dropped, as one German authority put it, “because Russia’s spaces are so vast that we may not see the wagons again ” An example of Russia’s difficulties is revealed in the Don Basin coal industry, which accounts for more than half of Russia’s coal output. "Izvestia” points out that the difficulties arise from weak technical leadership in industry. There are thousands of trained engineers and technicians, but only a few work in the mines, most of them being employed in offices. The workmen are also deprived of any incentive for increasing the output by the variations in the rates of pay for identical work.—By radio. AMERICAN LOAN 60,000.000 DOLLAR RECONSTRUCTION BILL INTRODUCED [U.P.A.-By Electric Telegraph-Copyright] (Received 9th January, 11.30 a.m.) WASHINGTON, Bth January. Senator Brown, Michigan, introduced a bill to authorise the treasury to make a 60,000.000 dollar Reconstruction Finance Commission Loan to Finland, whereupon Senator Glass commented: “The trouble is we haven’t sixty millions, but I would be in favour of borrowing it and letting Finland have it. I am not neutral in thought or words.