Evening star., 1939-10-11
Firms Likely 10 Fight
Il Too Hard Pressed
By Soviet Russia
Determined Stand Nav
Win Eusier Terms
From StuIin

WIN IU3teT ISImS
From Stulin
BY COL. FREDERICK PALMER,
Noted Military Expert.
There is no hardened world-trav-
eler, no cosmopolitan, touched at
times by cynical fatalism about the
depravity of totalitarian action, who
will not be stirred to raging indig-
nation, if he has ever crossed the
Russo Finnish border, by the news
from Finland.
That is. If he likes a bath and a
shave, a clean, progressive. self re-
liant, outstanding people in a free
country. 1t Is Finland, the sturdy
little republic; the Finland of Paavo
Nurmi, the runner and Olympic
athlete, of fine university, popular
education and industry; the Finland
that has kept on paying the install
ments on her war debts.
While Dr. Juhu Paasikivi goes to
Moscow to listen to Josef Stains
ultimatum for the fourth of the
little Baltic states, after three have
taken his orders, Helsinki and its
environs are being evacuated of their
civil populations. This is announced
as a precautionary measure, but ii
may mean that the Firms will fight
II too hard-pressed. AS a people
they mind their own business, but
they are not the sort to take a
punch, after slap in the face, lying
down. 1t is in them to prefer a
fight to the death to servile bowling
of the knee under the Soviet whip.
They may be driven into a mood
where they will no more consider
the odds against them than the
frontier settler against savages. The
odds are far greater than the
Czechs, and immeasurably greater
than the Poles, had to face.
Stain Without Excuse.
Little Finland, with an area OF
$4,000 square miles and popu-
lation of 1867 900, against Soviet
Russia, with an area of 5000 OOC
square miles and population OF
170y000,O0O. Perhaps 18O,OOO,OOO is
nearer correct. What matters a few
millions this way or that among
Stains hordes?
Finland has an army of 1875 900
one tank company $50 planes
against Russias army of 1000 OO(
torganized and her huge reservoir
of half-trained man-power, which
she asserts is 100000, her re-
ported 5000 tanks and armored
cars, her reported 42O heavy bomb
ers, 1000 light bombers, 5000 fight
ers, 1000 reconnaissance ships, or
in all, more than 5000 planes, old
and modern. These figures present
a Lllliput David about / foot tall
accepting the challenge of a Goliath
about 20 feet tall.
If ever little nation had a lust
cause, it is Finland under the Rus.
sian threat. Stain cannot offer
the excuse he had to repatriate the
Russians in Poland or that Hitler
had in the Germans in Sudeten-
land, in Silesia and the Corridor
He is an apt Hitler pupil. already
going the master one better.
No Minorities Question.
The elf-determination experts
in framing the Versailles treaty for
territorial divisions which would
place subject minorities under their
own rule, had no problem in setting
up the Finnish state. Ninety pei
cent are of the Finnish race and the
rest Swedish of such close kin that
they are practically the same.
The Firms wanted no Sovietism
The evangels of Sovietism, tryine
to establish cells and following tht
usual methods of indoctrination
were about as welcome in Fin.
land as group of tramps and bar.
room loafers who marched into 6
New England town meeting with 6
demand that all property was tt
be divided among them, with, one
as the dictator of the proletariat
The Firms just elboWed the evangel!
out. Possibly Stain has grudge
against them for their benightee
lack of response to the Sovie,
theology.
He marshals his hordes on the
Finnish border. There is a great
activity at Kronstadt, the Russian
naval base. Russian aviators await
the word to bomb Helsinki, only 40
minutes away, as Warsaw was
bombed
Are the Films, happy people, to
Ronrif1no fhoir Efn ~, the
land they love, the land where they
labor through the winter to send
timber and wood pulp to the Euro
pean market, the land of the unsur-
passed summer beauty of their
myriad lakes to the traveller? To
him there is no comparison, except
a summer trip from Portland or
Seattle up through the Alexander
Archipelago to Alaska.
Swedes May Back Firms.
Man to man, the little Finnish
Army is incomparably superior to
the Russian. In that Finland which
gave us the great composer Sibelius
what modern Russian composer
can match him?-every. man from
the age of II to so is at his coun-
try's call as a soldier. A natural
athlete, intelligent. highly literate
hardy, vigorous product of a stern
climate, he is thoroughly trained.
b. In winter, across the frozen lake.
under the Aurora Borealis, or acros.
their shimmering surfaces in sum.
mer, Finnish soldier in guerrilla
warfare, small target for the Rus.
sian bombers, ought to take five tt
one at least of the Asiatic hordes
even after the sons of the dusty
steppes get acclimatized.
Stain would possess the strategic
Aaland Islands to fortify them ir
protection of his Baltic ports
Against whom? Let Hitler takt
note of that question. Against thu
German Navy, which controls tht
Baltic Sea?
And, after Stain has Finland
~I-