BREAK WITH FINLAND

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 22934, 3 July 1944, Page 6

BREAK WITH FINLAND

United States Decision

RUGBY. June 30. The State Department has announced that the United States has broken off diplomatic relations with Finland. Announcing the break with Finland, the United States Secretary of State (Mr Cordell Hull) called attention to the Finnish announcement of June 27 of the complete agreement reached between Finland and Germany to carry on the war. Mr Hull said that the Finnish Government had thus formally admitted to the world that it had now entered a hard and fast military partnership with Nazi Germany irrevocably throughout the war for the purpose of fighting- the Allies. Until now the United States had taken every opportunity to warn Finland of the inevitable consequences of continuing its association with Nazi Germany. These warnings had been ignored, and the partnership was now complete. The United States Government must take into account the fact that at this decisive stage in the combined operations of the forces of the United States the Finnish operations have a direct bearing on the success of the Allied effort. Notwithstanding the esteem in which the American people held the people of Finland, further relations between the United States and Finnish Governments were now impossible. Mr Hull said that the United States had asked Switzerland to assume the representation of American interests in Finland. The break is regarded in Washington as- little more than a gesture, since it has accomplished little more than closing the Legation at Helsinki, while the two remaining Finnish attaches in Washington will be sent home. The Finnish Minister had already been proclaimed non persona grata on June 16. and prohibited to leave the United States.