CONGRESS FIGHTS OVER A FINNISH LOAN. President Roosevelt’s proposed new loan to Finland for purchase of non-military supplies has stirred up a storm in Congress -- in some ways it sounds like a transcription disc of the arms embargo debate last fall. The isolationists are jumping up an down claiming that giving loans to Finland is “unneutral.’ Senator Nye argues that a loan would be -- you guessed it -- a ‘first step” toward sending in American soldiers to fight Europe’s wars. “If we great a loan,” he says in Wednesday’s, Chicago Tribune, “the squeeze will become greater and greater. We will have to give more and more, and then it will be easy to go the rest of the route.”
Actually, the administration has already granted the Finns $10 million in credits to purchase agricultural goods and “other civilian supplies.” One proposal before the Senate Banking Committee, for a direct government loan of $60 million, probably won’t get far. But the President now suggests another loan could be advanced to the Finns through Import-Export Bank extensions of credit. No sum was named, but the New York Times puts the amount at $25 million. The Roosevelt plan also requires authorizing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to purchase loans and securities from the bank, as an essential part of the transaction. Chesley Manly in the Tribune quotes those who calls this a ‘subterfuge,” while the Times story refers to it as a “compromise.”
However much (or little) it would help the Finns, who this week are fighting in temperatures of 55 below zero, the debate once again exposes the peculiarities of both sides in the neutrality debate. House Majority Leader Rayburn opposes “unneutral” action on our part, but says approvingly that if the Finns don’t need U.S. agricultural products which could be bought with the loans, they could trade them elsewhere “for other products,” i.e., munitions. His reasoning appears to be that it would be bad to let Finland buy U.S. munitions with U.S. loans, but good to let Finland buy, in roundabout fashion, French munitions with U.S. loans. Such are the verbal pirouettes that pro-administration congressmen use to disguise their pro-interventionist beliefs. On the other side, Senator George said during this week’s debate, “We all sympathize with Finland...Finland is a foreign country fighting...for the principles we hold dear. But...a loan to Finland is an unneutral act.” Yes, we sympathize with the democratic Finns, fighting for their lives against a heartless, bloodthirsty dictatorship, but...not all that much.
RUSSIA’S NEXT TARGET -- THE MIDDLE EAST? H.N. Brailsford has an interesting essay in thsi week’s New Republic suggesting the possibility of just that --
“...[T]he Nazis have been trying, not without a measure of success, to embroil the Russians with the Turks. Dr. Goebbels’ organ in the press made the flattering suggestion that in the Middle East the laurels of Alexander would become Stalin’s brow. The hero operated as far afield as India, but his chief exploits lay in the lands which we describe as Turkey, Syria, Irak, and Iran. Any martial adventures in this region would automatically involve the western allies. This seemed too crude a trap, for Turkey has been for twenty years Russia’s only steadfast friend. There followed, none the less, in the organ of the Communist International, threats which were aimed first at Rumania and then at Turkey. The article was indeed disavowed. In view of the slow progress of the Finnish campaign, it may have been rather a premature disclosure of Russian policy than a false one. To lure Russia into active belligerency, not on the western front...but in the Middle East, is one use which Germany might make of Russia’s new status of outlawry.”
THE NAZI WINTER. Sigrid Schultz writes in Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune of the hardships Berliners are facing in the January weather --
“Altho the cold wave has abated slightly, the shortage of coal continued to be a serious problem in Berlin today. The capital’s technical high school was closed because of the lack of coal. A number of schools which have used up their coal reserves sent pupils home for an indefinite period. The children were instructed to report twice a week to learn if enough coal had been accumulated to heat the classrooms. The shortage of coal for heating water in apartment buildings is so acute that the authorities have ruled that hot water can be furnished twice a week at the utmost. The chief topic of conversation among men was how to shave with their tiny rationed amounts of shaving soap and the lack of hot water. Housewives bemoaned their washday difficulties in view of the shortage of soap, soda, and hot water.”
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