Evening star., 1940-01-07

With the thermometer at 80 b
counter-ofenSiUe on the inDdding
The North Pole may be the final turn
ing point of the war which now threatens
to engulf Europe.
The possibility sounds fantastic, for
the picture most of us have of the polar
where the nights last all winter and
where lonely, ignorant Eskimos eat
blubber three times a day, drive REIN
deer sleds, wear priceless sealskins for
work shirts and build houses of snow
blocks.
Yet the icy air of the Arctic Circle is
already the scene of bitter battle.
Like figures in futuristic fairy tale,
Finnish soldiers in ghostly white glide
| downhill on skis, silent as the death they
deal to Russians advancing through the
valleys. They swoop, strike, and dis
! appear.
Frostbite harries armies accustomed to
bullets but unprepared against the frigid
cold
Retreating men run, afoot, alongside
motor lorries to keep from freezing.
Mechanized fighting units stop in their
tracks, lost in binding blizzards.
One of the opening phases of the Rus
sian invasion of Finland was in the Pet
samo region on the Arctic Ocean. The
Red Army landed troops from convoy
ships to seize the port of this region,
more than 200 miles north of the Arctic
Circle. One of their first objectives, the
nickel mining center, Salmijarvi, is near
the point where Europe reaches closest
| to the North Pole. They met their first
| fierce resistance bare 80 miles from the
Arctic Coast, at Finlands subpolar Sieg-
fried Iine-the "Lapland Mannerheim"
forts.
More than the attempted conquest of
Finland is involved in this frozen sector
of the war front.
At Murmansk, Russian port on the
Arctic Ocean, the Germans kept the
United States freighter City of Flint
during the diplomatic storm seizure of
that vessel raised.
At Murmansk, too, the German liner
Bremen sought temporary refuge on its
daring dash from New York to Bremen
haven.
From Murmansk, some sources suspect,
has come the fuel to enable the Nazi
pocket battleship Deutschland to raid
the North Atlantic.
Between Murmansk and Iceland the
Deutschland sank the Rawalpindi.
Murmansk is important as the only
ice-free year-round port on Russia's
northern coast (free because it is washed
by the Gulf Stream and as the Soviet's
sole outlet to the Atlantic. It is more
important as the western gateway to
vast new and strange empire the Soviets
are building on the frozen earth around
the polar sea.
This gateway is so strongly fortified
that it is known to students of Russian
affairs as "the Gibraltar of the North"
Joseph Stain himself inspected the naval
base established there in 1888 and per-
sonally reviewed the fleet placed as
watchdog in those waters.
Powerful Notifications are to be ex-
pected there. Foreign control of Muir
mansk and the Kola Peninsula, which
juts east from Scandinavia like moose's
nose, would shut off Russia's trade route
to the west, effectively dominate the
northwestern part of the country and
/ bottle up the Soviet's panama Canal'
between the White and Baltic Seas.
The military value of the Kola PENN
sula has been recognized many times.
The British destroyed the harbor Of
Chaterina during the Napoleonic wars.
The town of Kola was bombarded in the
Crimean War. The allies used Muir
mansk as supply base, building rail-
road inland, to maintain the eastern
front in the World War after the central
powers cut the Baltic and Black Sea
routes to Russian aid. y
Today Kola is more significant than
ever, not only as the key to the new
Arctic empire of the Russians, but as
a literal storehouse of ammunition. Out
of the ice-hard ground which covers
its $4,000 square miles (the size of New
England, Kola is almost completely
within the Arctic Circle has been dug
millions of tons of apatite ore, source
of superphosphates. In peacetime super
phosphates are the richest of fertilizers
for farm crops. In war they become the
highest of explosives.
Kola is like Americas at. v. "a" in
this respect. On this peninsula, as in
the Tennessee River Valley, the super
phosphates are concentrated by electric
| ity generated in huge dams built on
waterfalls.
Modern hydro-electric power stations
in region most of the world thinks Of
as white wilderness constitute one Of
the elements that make Russia's Arctic
conquest sound like Jules Verne dream.
One waterfall on the Niva River has
been hitched up to supply light and
power to the cities of Kirovsk and Mon.
! chesorsk. Another serves Murmansk.