HATRED OF RUSSIANS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 84, Issue 5, 6 January 1940, Page 8

HATRED OF RUSSIANS

FINNS EXPECTED ATTACK i SITUATION SEEN BI DR H. SUTHERLAND [ Per Press Association J WELLINGTON, Jan. 5. I If the Finns can hold out unh] the snow melts in the first week ot April they can smash the biggest army Russia can put. in the field, declared Dr. Halliday Sutherland, giving his peisonal impressions of the Finnish struggle against Russia. Dr. Sutherland, who is spending several weeks in New Zealand, knows Finland exceedingly well. He was i>. Finland and Lapland two and a-hali years’ ago, he said, and he was one of the few people who was not surprised at the strong Finnish lesisl ance to the Russian menace. When there he found that every Sunday, winter and summer, from 2 p.rn. to 8-p.m., a white guard. 100,000 strong and equipped with uniforms anu skis practised musketry in the forests in readiness lor the Rusi sian attack which they knew would 1 come. They knew also that the Rusi sians would move in winter because ■ Finland’s eastern frontier in summer > is simply a swamp. I The Finns hated the Russians as ‘ they hated the devil, for they knew and detested Russian rule. They could not forget the period from 1808 ’ to 1918 when Finland was under Russian domination, a period when Russia suppressed the Finnish language and Finnish justice, abolished the Finnish Parliament which had existed for 400 years, and did away with the Finnish Army.