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Show TWO SIDES To Every Question THE FINNISH VICTORY Injury which she has sustained is the killing of many of her fine young men her "breeding stock." It takes centuries to wipe out the traces of this feature of war's destruction. de-struction. Europe's politicians lose territory terri-tory in one war only to regain it in the next, but they can't repair the ravages which the lack of the young blood makes upon future generations. They do not consider that feature onr any human lives for that matter, except their own when they decide to make a move on the political or economic chess board. As long as they have more young human lives to gamble with than the enemy, everything is jake. So let us sum up what the sob sisters call the "rape of Finland." Heretofore, her people have always had a reputation as good fighters. She has been considered trustworthy, trust-worthy, progressive, a fair financial finan-cial risk, and a hard nut to crack. Now, she has demonstrated to the business world that when she borrows bor-rows money, she repays it, and that she is so difficult to defeat that she is an exceptionally good financial risk. She has strengthened her grip on freedom by showing any avaricious avari-cious neighbor that it would cost too much in money and men to defeat de-feat her. This is evidenced by the fact that Russia forty times her size, called it off as soon as she could do so and still save her face. When their leaders accepted the Russian terms instead of sacrificing sacrific-ing their people on the altar of false pride, the Finns proved that ' it is possible, even in Europe, to select men of intelligence to run a government. She has enhanced her prestige a thousandfold by the magnificence of her military defense de-fense and she has written a new and glorious page in her long record rec-ord of honorable achievement. Finland Fin-land was not defeated she won a great victory! Sure help the Finns with 1 loans, gifts, sweaters, and useful words and deeds. They will do the same for us if ever our cases are reversed, for of all that conglomeration conglom-eration of grasping, fighting, selfish self-ish nations which composes what is called "European Civilization" Finland alone we can call "Friend." Sentimentalists continue to harp and rant upon the conquest, rape defeat, dismemberment, crucifixion, crucifix-ion, annihilation, and devastation of Finland. They make such a pitiful case for the Finns that one wonders what can be left of this poor "defeated" people. Now, as a matter of fact, the regrettable little lit-tle set-back of recent date is no more than a pimple on the nose compared to the boils and carbuncles carbun-cles which have beset the career of this remarkable people. Around the end of the seventh century, the Finns moved into what is now Finland. Their origin is a bit confused and even our best students of ethnology are hard put to separate them from the other tribes of the Ural-Altaic family. Whoever they were, they proved & tough crowd to tackle; in fact, they did most of the tackling themselves, so much so that the Swedes conquered, baptized, and attempted to absorb them just to get rid of them. For a hundred years or so thereafter there-after they were killed off with systematic sys-tematic regularity in order that they might become good Christians. Christ-ians. Then for a while their country coun-try became an arena for Swedes and Russians to play war on and, incidentally, to rape and ravage. In the early part of the sixteenth sixteen-th century, Finland was made a Grand-Duchy, which did not help the Finns much, as by this time the Danes had joined the Russians and Sweeds in kicking them a-round. a-round. The Finns got a break around the beginning of the seventh century cen-tury and except for an occasional scourge in the way of famine or pestilence, or both, which almost wiped them out two or three times, they did fairly nicely for a hundred hund-red years. Then Peter the Great practically annihilated them in an effort to grab them from Sweden. A couple of more wars between Russia and Sweden mostly at Finland's expense ended (1809) in the cession of all Finland to Russia, Under Alexander I and Alexander II, who, as Emperors of Russia, were automatically Grand Dukes of Finland, the indestructible indestruct-ible little country prospered; but during the first five years of our present century, rotten Russian politics almost ruined it again. The rest is recent history: independence inde-pendence proclaimed December 6, 1917; civil war until April, 1918, when the Germans and the White Finns drove the Reds back into Russia; treaty signed with Russia (October 14, 1920) acknowledging acknowledg-ing independence of Finland; great presperity and construction for almost twenty years, only to bechecked again, this time by Gentle Gen-tle Joe Stalin and his crew of "non- imperialistic" cutthroats, who ran into a porcupine instead of a rabbit and had to be satisfied with a few nibbles off the Finns' eastern frontier. From this latest blow, that rubber rub-ber ball called Finland has not sustained sus-tained great loss of territory, prestige pres-tige or credit; the only irreparable |
