SWEDES JOIN THE FIGHT AGAINST RUSSIA. According to an Associated Press story yesterday by Wade Werner, “increasing numbers” of Swedish volunteer pilots have joined the Finnish defense effort, and are taking on Soviet planes and troops in Lapland, above the Arctic Circle. They are protecting Finnish forces against swarms of Russian bombers, “up to 450 in one day,” which have hit the north and south of Finland in the last week or so. The Finns also say the Swedes are “taking a toll” on Russian ground units. Swedish volunteers number about a thousand so far -- they are supplied by their government and commanded by their own officers. They have been joined by much smaller numbers of Finnish-Americans, Norwegians, Danes, and Italians.
FINLAND’S STILL WINNING -- FOR NOW. An A.P. story Friday said that this same Russian force, which in December had tried to cut Finland in half across her “waist” and had succeeded in penetrating 65 miles inside the Russian border, is now “fighting a bitter rear-guard battle an a desperate attempt to escape to the [Russian] frontier.” The Finns say the Russians have been driven back 28 miles in bitter cold, which continues to give the defenders an advantage. “The Russians, hungry and frost-bitten, were said by the Finns to be poorly equipped, whereas the defenders were clad in heavy boots, many pairs of woolen socks, heavy uniforms and sheepskin coats,” reports the A.P.
Once again, it sounds like the Finns are holding their own. But another report from the A.P. on Saturday cites British military authorities as declaring it would take an influx of 30,000 more trained soldiers, 200 planes and a “generous supply” of military equipment to “save” Finland from an eventual Russian breakthrough -- if all of it were to arrive before May. Outside of Sweden, will the many countries which have offered verbal support to the Finns put their money -- and men -- where their mouths are?
THE MURROW-SHIRER JOINT BROADCAST. In case you didn’t catch it, the C.B.S. did an interesting broadcast Thursday night from Holland featuring its two top European correspondents side-by-side. Edward R. Murrow, Columbia’s man in London, joined William Shirer, the network’s Berlin reporter, to speculate on how the Allies and the German Reich will fare in the weeks ahead.
The two men spent several minutes tossing good-natured barbs at one another but made one serious point above all – there doesn’t seem to be any way Britain, France, and Germany will negotiate a peace settlement before the war gets serious. Mr. Murrow says there is “plenty” of official talk in London about negotiating a peace, but only if the Germans get rid of their Nazi rulers first. Mr. Shirer says the British offer isn’t trusted either by German officials or ordinary burghers, who now believe emphatically that either Germany must win the war or be “smashed completely.” The German “peace offensive” is over, and don’t underestimate the sacrifices the Germans will make to “avoid another Versailles,” Mr. Shirer warns. On top of that, Mr. Murrow observes that “people are beginning to get mad in Britain” as well, and are no longer willing to draw such a clear-cut distinction between the German government and its people.
The upshot is that the Germans expect “plenty of action in the spring,” Mr. Shirer says, but what kind of action is anyone’s guess. Mr. Murrow says the British “get a different theory every twenty-four hours,” but they confidently figure that their blockade is squeezing the Nazis pretty hard, and that Hitler’s regime will eventually crack without a major battle. Mr. Shirer, meanwhile, notes a promise made the other day by Dr. Frick, German minister of the interior, that “no lives will be thrown away” in the war. Thus, Mr. Shirer speculates that a Nazi attack won’t be directed at France, i.e., a bloody affair aimed at breaking the Maginot Line. Instead it could well be an immense air offensive aimed at destroying Britain. The two reporters marveled at Amsterdam, a city devoid of blackouts and war shortages, and hoped they could return to a peaceful Holland in the spring. Alas, if the Germans do launch an all-out air attack on Britain in the coming months, they will likely seize Belgium and the Netherlands as air bases for that effort.
WESTERN FRONT IS “QUIETER THAN EVER.” Whatever happens in the days ahead, last week’s scare over an impending German attack on Belgium and Holland seems to have come to nothing. And a wireless from Paris in Saturday’s New York Times says that the situation on the French-German front line has never been “so marked, with days and nights equally quiet, as now.” The dispatch adds that “despite periodical scares there is no trustworthy indication that anything is going to happen soon. More French commentators are now echoing the questions suggested...in recent weeks: Will the Germans attack in the Spring? Are there valid reasons why they should? The truth is that nobody knows.”
“ROULETTE WITH DESTINY.” New York Herald Tribune columnist Dorothy Thompson served up a blistering rebuke Friday to isolationists in Congress who have succeeded thus far in denying additional U.S. loans to Finland on that grounds that such aid is “unneutral” --
“In one of the most critical moments of history Congress has chosen to behave with extreme frivolity. In a moment when every small neutral in Europe is trembling in fear of an extension of undeclared war; when all Scandinavia fears a breakthrough of the Russian armies, and when Holland and Belgium fear an assault from Germany; the world’s greatest neutral has slapped Finland’s face in the most ostentatious way and in view of the whole earth....Finland would never have applied for a loan had there been the slightest indication that it would have been refused. The refusal is a staggering political blow. It is the greatest political victory that Stalin has had thus far. It is at the same time, aid and assistance to the most immoderate forces in Germany. The moderates have been trying to stay Hitler’s hand by telling him that another aggression against a neutral state would outrage all neutral countries, particularly the United States....If we turn down the loan to Finland, we shall stand for international anarchy, and hope that by repressive measures at home we can stop it from spreading here -- while we give notice to the world that the United States is scared....We are not behaving like ourselves.”
SCREWY WEATHER (II). New York City is facing a rare bout of zero-degree temperatures, while in Chicago the mercury has dipped to minus fourteen -- that city’s coldest weather in several years. The New York Times also reports “such meteorological oddities as icicles in Alabama and a reading of 39 above zero in Alaska.” Eighty-two persons have died in twenty-four states due to the widespread cold wave. Still, our own country can’t hold a candle to the Finnish interior, where soldiers are braving temperatures as low as fifty-eight degrees below zero -- the coldest there since 1878.
Was it only a couple of months ago (Nov. 6, to be exact) when the Associated Press reported the claims of climatologists that the world was getting steadily warmer, and that the warming trend might signal “the start of one of the major changes in climate which the earth has not known since geological time, long before recorded history”?
REST IN PEACE, SENATOR BORAH. In life, he was a controversial figure -- adored by isolationists most recently for his leading, though futile, role last fall to prevent Congress from repealing the arms embargo provisions of the Neutrality Act. He also angered supporters of President Roosevelt plenty of times, such as in 1938 when he rallied opposition to the President’s abortive plan to put new justices on the Supreme Court. The grey-maned “Lion of Idaho” represented his state for a third of a century in the Senate, and was consistent in his isolationism throughout his service -- he had crusaded against membership in the League of Nations in 1919.
But when Borah died of a cerebral hemorrhage last week at the age of 74, his friends and adversaries united to pay him fair tribute. President Roosevelt said it well enough -- “Although, perhaps on this or that or the other political problem, we may have differed from time to time -- yet his purpose, my purpose, and the ultimate objectives of, I think, everybody in this room, interested in the future of America -- those purposes were identical. And the Nation has lost one of its great leaders in his passing.”
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