Evening star., 1940-03-02
Films Need Planes,
Not Soft-Headed
BeneyoIence Is Claim,
Gift Givers Would Like
To Be Helpful in Wrong
Way for Right Reason
By WILLIAM L. WHITE

ny
EN- ROUTE TO THE ARCTIC
CIRCLE, SOMEWHERE IN FIN
LAND-The country out of the
window is very fiat. but the forests
get thinner as we go further north.
Here and there are great clearings
where the Firms store the brief heat
of the short summer sun in hay
fields. The hay is cured In the little
log hay barns which dot these clear
ings-they average four or five hay
barns to a 40-acre tract-and the
sunshine comes out in winter in
butter and rich milk.
Now and then little wooden
town swings by the car window.
Except for a slight difference in
window and door trim and the slope
Of roofs, it might be Indiana or
Minnesota.
No Slams Near Tracks.
But these Firms are all comfort
able-there are no slums near the
railroad tracks - fat, comfortable
middle class frame houses, One
swings by, with all its windows
shattered, slightly askew on its base
and an end well blown in. Just
beside it is bomb crater 80 feet
across-the Russians must have
aimed at and barely missed this
single track railway line which joins
the Arctic front with Helsinki and
the south.
In the adjoining compartment
are three children-two boys and
girl all under 12-traveling alone,
with tags around their necks. They
are on their way to town just over
the border in Sweden. Their father
is druggist in the town we have
just come through. Yesterday it
was bombed. The children ran to
huddle in the cellar when the siren
screamed-a 200 kilo Russian bomb
crashed through the roof down into
the cellar, but did not go off 4,
perhaps, the children say, because
1t first went through 10 sacks of
potatoes-their winters supply
stored there, and these broke the
fall.
The children are on their way to
q druggist in Sweden whose name
Is written on the tags-an acquaint-
ance of their fathers who promised
to keep them until the end of the
war.
Desire to Help Genuine.
The children are having their
pictures taken with the chubby,
genial representative of the Ameri-
can Benevolent Committee and what
I like is how genuine it all is. He
is as genuinely desirous of helping
the less fortunate as are the con-
tributors to the fund. The pho
tographer is genuinely employed by
the committee so that the con-
tributors at home may have genu-
Inc picture of its activities in relief
of genuine civilian suffering. The
little girl is genuinely uncomfortable
sitting on the photographers knee
just beneath his genuinely benevo-
lent smile. The two little boys are
scowling from either side at the
lens with genuine suspicion. What
the children of Finland really need
is not this smiling soft handed
benevolence in horn-rimmed specta-
cles, but some pursuit planes to
chase the bombers back to Russia,
fact of which all are acutely aware,
including the contributors to the
fund, who would genuinely like to
keep on being helpful in the wrong
way for the right reason, so that
the little children, when they are
blown through the roof. will still
have roses in their cheeks from this
genuine benevolence, and if you
have ever seen anything more genu-
Inc than all this I don't know where
1t is.