TRIBUTE TO FINLAND

Patea Mail, 5 January 1940, Page 3

TRIBUTE TO FINLAND

BY VISITING- CHURCHMAN A tribute to Finland and the Finnish people was paid recently by the Rev. W. A.. Spicer, Field Secretary of the Seventh Day Adventist Conference, who arrived in the Dominion after a tour of Poland and Finland. To get to Europe once during the Great War, Mr. Spicer was on beard a vessel which successfully passed through .the densely-mined North Sea. He was then permitted to visit European countries at will, but on this occasion, for the first time in liis life, his passport has been stamped to make it invalid for travel in any country in Europe. N ’ “ The whole world has tightened its belt somehow,” said Mr. Spicer. “The belligerent nations, and the others too, have entered more strenuously .into the conditions of war - this time than was the case 25 years ago. The atmsopherc is more tense, and the nations seem to be girding themselves for a long war. ”

Recalling his visit to Finland, Mr. Spicer said he first visited it in 1905, when it was part of Russia. In recent years it showed marked progress, and became a country of clean, substantial cities, with keen, industrious people. “They were not belligerent, peppery people, lyt minded their own business,” he said. “I rear they least expected attack from Buss’* in the north, as they made all their preparations for it to come from the south.”