Evening star., 1940-02-05
Newspaper in Finnish
City Acts as Host
To War Reporters
Wives Of Publisher and
Editor Prepare Meal
Served in Newsroom
By WILLIAM L. WHITE.

ping an 8-inch shell in it about every
few minutes, which it not making 1t
any better.
The town reminds me sometimes
of Wichita, Kans., and sometimes of
Topeka. It was something under a
hundred thousand before the war,
and its leading newspaper had lots
of advertising and 10000 circulation
in the trade territory which ran
clear up to the Russian border. The
Bolshevik Army has since cut into
the trade territory considerably, and
the circulation has dropped to 1000,
including copies given away free to
the Finnish soldiers.
The hotel was not as nice as the
Hotel Jayhawk in Topeka or the
Hotel BroadvieW in Wichita, but it
had sign in the lobby telling us in
Finnish that Rotary meets every
Tuesday at 1915, and it also had
lovely, lovely concrete walls about
two feet thick, which is much more
important now in this end of the
world than bedside reading lamps
or innerspring mattresses. When we
got there, the room clerk and all
the chambermaidS were down in the
bombproof, so we went behind the
counter to the desk and got keys to
rooms we thought we would like up
on the sixth floor, which would give
us view of the bombs dropping
on the city. Then we found we could
run the elevators ourselves. so we
did, and we liked the hotel very
much.
Town No More Beautiful.
The town itself was just a little
bit more beautiful and modern than
the average American town. 1t had
a big wood pulp factory and a big
soap factory, and each of these was
tall and stately and simple and
modern and clean lined, and more
beautiful of itself than the Kansas
City Soldiers Memorial, which is
very costly and intended only to be
beautiful and does not in addition
make soap or wood pulp or jobs for
any one except the guy whose job IS
to turn on and off the eternal flame
burning at the top.
This town does not have in its
better residential district as many
big fancy imitation tudor or renais-
sance of Spanish mansions as the
oil boom left in Wichita or as the
lawyers who lobby the State Legisla-
ture have built in Topeka, but
neither does it have around the rail-
road tracks as many squalid, un-
painted, rickety, hopeless-looking
shacks where the unemployed live
as do Wichita and Topeka, because
there never have been so many
unemployed in Finland.
We have bombed all that day so
there was no breakfast or lunch or
dinner in the hotel, but along in
the evening the newspaper heard
we were in town without anything to
eat, and they rallied around just as
a Wichita or Topeka newspaper
would.
Wives Prepare Meal.
The publishers wife and the
editors wife and the managing
editors wife got together on the
telephone and compared notes on
what they happened to have in their
ice boxes, took it all down to the
city room of the newspaper office,
along with knives and forks and
dishes, and at midnight the staff OF
the newspaper stood around and
watched us while we ate, and tried
out their high school English and
German and French on us, with
pretty good results.
The newspaper plant would knock
your eye out for town OF that size
very modernistic and new and
streamlined and efficient-the city
editor was swell tough guy, and
the telegraph editor was a we'll
informed guy, and the man who
handles circulation and the re-
porter who covers courthouse and
city hall were also swell guys and
exactly like the ones in America,
only, of course, the assignment
book was printed in Finnish and
so was the advertising managers
dummy for laying out next days
paper, but aside from this there was
no difference at all.
The publisher was there, and he
was very dignified, like an American
publisher, and wore wing collar
and had a paneled Office with very
deep leather lounge chairs, again
like an American publisher, and he
greeted us with cordial dignity and
then retired to his Office, leaving
our actual entertainment to sub
ordinates, as most American pub
fishers would do.
Worried About BoIshevism.
There he sat down in one of his
deep leather chairs and began to
worry about Bolshevism, which is
also an accepted practice among
many American publishers in their
spare time. But this one really had
something to worry about, what
with the Bolsheviks already occu-
pylllS d llill " VI 1llS u aoS CSiAteoiS 8,
his circulation down from 10000 to
1000 and most of this deadhead,
the Bolsheviks dropping g. inch
shells into his town at 10-minute
intervals and machine cunning it
from the air, which is bad for
business and consequently terrible
for both classified and display ad-
vertising.
That night there was another air
raid, so at 2 o'clock we were herded
for the rest of the night into the
bomb b-proof, which turned out to
be the basement of this same news
paper. where its rolls of newsprint
are stored. I also am a newspaper
publisher, but few of my fellow
publishers know that If you wedge
a gas mask in between couple OF
dinkey rolls you have a reasonably
level bed.
Lying on it I figured out that
GAS 50 Ran