FINLANDIA

And now it is Finland. Russia is the arch-criminal this time, not Germany, and as far as the United States is concerned she has committed an outrage with possibly even less justification than those of the Reich, against a country which is more intimately related to America by common ties and friendship than either Czechoslovakia or Poland. The significance of the Finnish conquest, (its outcome is undebatable) may be less far-reaching than those of its predecessors, but pacifistic sentiment in the United States will clearly be put to another severe strain.

Although situated far away in Northwest Europe, Finland has long been considered a close friend by Americans. It is a strong, clean, upstanding nation; its government is democratic, it has always minded its own business, and held no designs of aggression. Finland is the land of Sibelius, the land where the Olympics were to be held; the land that paid its war debts, and carried on a brisk trade with the United States. Now it is being ruthlessly destroyed. The effect over here on the large body of Scandinavians in the Northwestern States will not be insignificant. Thus far they have meant a great bloc of isolationist sentiment in Congress, but their enthusiasm to steer clear of the European turmoil may be dimmed by the present tragedy of a nation.

As for Russia, her brutal action will tend to clarify the general nature of her policy, problematical though it remains, and clarify at the same time the attitude of America toward her. She is now in the process of regaining the second piece of territory taken from her in the Versailles treaty, and with the more gradual domination of the little Baltic sea-coast states, it is clear she intends to regain as much of her lost territory as possible. As she becomes a great Baltic power again, she appears more like the Imperialistic Russia of old than a new Communist Union, with purely selfish designs intended neither to help nor to hinder Adolf Hitler. For America and the other neutrals, if they were not convinced by the Russo-German alliance last August or the joint Polish seizure of September, the Finnish invasion will remove any hesitation they had in placing Russia and Germany in the same category.

As long as this destructive nihilism continues, every weak state is in danger of disappearing, and America if she hopes to stay neutral, must steel her mind to see the theatre of war gradually widen over Europe. There is not much the United States can do. She can protest to Russia, declare her a belligerent and an aggressor but very little more. But what is important for us is to try to see the issues more clearly all the time, and maintain neutrality in action even though it is becoming more and more impossible to maintain it in thought. Meanwhile states like Finland will be unjustly destroyed.