Modern Finland

Northland Age, Volume IX, Issue 39, 20 February 1940, Page 1

Modern Finland

When writers of the eminence of . Augustine Birrell have confessed in the past to thinking that the Finns j were modified Eskimos, living on seal blubber ,and having a bleak and Arctic outlook on things—until one met them, to discover they were almost English—it is no wonder we are all surprised to find them so goahead, writes a well known English woman journalist who is now resident in Paris. Finland today is clean, cheap, modern and efficient. Helsinki is recognised as the cleanest city in the world and perhaps the only city in the world which has no slums. Up-to-date workmen’s homes, hospitals and homes for children, bear witness, amongst other things of earnest social strivings. Good Business Man Progressive and businesslike is the hero of the Soviet-Finnish talks, M. Vaino Tanner. It is his brain that controls Elano, the Finnish Consumers’ Co-operative Society, which has 350 restaurants and stores. M. Paasikivi, who led the delegation, is not only an ex-Prime Minister, but the head of a great banking house and a ( specialist in both Russian and Scandinavian politics. Belonging to an old Swedish family whosee former name was Hellsten, the change to Paasikivi at the end of the nineteenth century is a reminder of the romantic fashion of those days for Swedes to adopt Finnish names. Rights of Women Finnish women wei - e the first in Europe to gain suffrage rights. That was in 1906, and in the following year they had nineteen women M.P.s in the Helsingfors Parliament. Added to that women have equal educational opportunities with men and 40 percent of the total university students are women. They also have the same rights as men in the judicial system —they may be judges and serve on juries. They have reached the highest ranks of Government service and have achieved equal pay for equal work. Today when their country is sorely beseiged, the Lotta Svaerd Society, founded as a memorial to the Finnish heroine by Finnish women, now resembles the English wartime women’s auxiliary services. Membership has grown to 80,000 and these women give their services free, spending hours in physical training, including ski-ing, swimming and baseball, (the national game), and cook for and render medical aid to soldiers in manoeuvres, even in the Arctic Circle j to the Finnish ski-infantry.