THE SINS OF THEIR FATHERS

The bear that walks like a cobra has shocked the world by sinking its fangs into Finland's neck. Americans are sickened by grotesque Soviet talk of Finnish war mongering and border incidents. There is a real danger that they will be so shocked and so sickened that they will mistakenly take out their ice on the hides of Russia's defenders in this country.

The hangman in the Kremlin has yanked the trap door from under the feet of those die-hard idealists who thought that the new Russia was a religion, a state transecuded by a burning desire to bring peace on earth, good will to men. Soviet Russia, these disillusioned folk know now, is as lustful and cruel as her neighbors. Like her neighbors, she must look first of all to her own security and power. Nations have always committed murder and rape while quoting the Bible or the Declaration of Independence. But while France and England can fight to save their empires and still succeed in selling the idea that they are battling for "the oppressed peoples of the world," Russia's clumsy justifications for invading Finland are salt in an open wound.

We cannot save Finland. Specifically, we cannot save Finland by wiping up the floor with Russia's American apologists, the Communists. Already, however, the witch-hunt is in full swing, with that eminent Finnish patriot, Martin Dies, leading the pack. American radicalism is neither a coherent philosophy nor a unified political movement. There is not even a united front. Communists and Socialists, Lovestoneites and Trotskyites are engaged in endless guerilla warfare. Because one section of the radical movement supports Stalin, the whole liberal and radical melange is threatened by a tidal wave of reaction.

France has crushed her Communists, curbed her radicals. In war she has foregone the luxury of free speech. But America is not at war. Outraged Americans must not be stampeded by the vision of an unleashed Russian juggernaut into silencing all American critics of the status quo. American radicals do not dictate the policy of the Kremlin; they should not be hung in effigy.