RUSSIA -- “END THE WAR ON OUR TERMS.” The papers this week-end are full of reports (and rumors) on Soviet Russia’s sudden interest in making peace with Finland. There's no consensus on whether or not it’s good news. One thing’s sure right now -- the Finnish government announced Thursday night that Soviet peace terms were on the way, supposedly harsher than the ones Stalin tried to force upon the Finns last autumn. These terms would be Finland’s cession of the Karelian Isthmus, along with multiple concessions for Russian bases elsewhere in Finland. A later report from Helsinki said that peace negotiations have begun. An Associated Press dispatch from Stockholm Saturday says the Swedes believe the talks are in the “final stage.”
Nobody doubts that the next few days are critical. Walter Kerr writes from Helsinki in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune that “the future of this little country depends on events of the coming week.” Mr. Kerr suggests that while the Finns are not interested in signing a peace that would reduce their nation to a Soviet vassal state, they do not like the bitter choice of fighting a lone, hopeless struggled against the overwhelming numbers of the Red Army. The upshot -- “Here in Helsinki it is said that the war will certainly go on if the next few days bring guaranties of real and immediate assistance. It may go on anyway, against odds which at times are crushing.”
WILL BRITAIN AND FRANCE FIGHT RUSSIA? Meanwhile, James B. Reston reports in Saturday’s New York Times that the Allies are trying to buck up Finnish resolve by promising great stores of military help, including troops. (Mr. Reston’s story doesn’t mention, though, Britain’s past vows of lavish military aid, and the subsequent lack of follow-through). Specifically, “the Finns were told that while they must decide for themselves how to answer the Soviet peace proposals, they might get ‘substantial’ military aid from the Allies if they will ask for it. This offer is interpreted in some quarters as an indication of Allied willingness to send an expeditionary force to support the Mannerheim Line, but this is not confirmed in British official quarters.”
The legal justification for Allied troops to join the fight would be December’s League of Nations resolution calling upon member states to halt the Russian aggression. The French and British desire to help Finland fight is prompted by the fact that any “peace” would very likely reduce Finland to the post-Munich status of Czecho-Slovakia, and merely postpone a full Soviet conquest. The resulting Russo-German domination of Scandinavia would be a major Allied defeat.
While the Finns have requested aid of all kinds, they have specifically not yet asked for direct military intervention. They fear this will provoke Nazi invasion before an effective Allied force could arrive, says the Times -- “while the British and French are trying to land 40,000 or 50,000 men -- in itself a staggering task -- Germany would occupy Southern Sweden, cut off Finland’s supplies and finally cooperate with the Russians in conquering the Finns.”
This leaves Finland in a supreme dilemma -- accept humiliating Russian peace terms, fight on and be crushed by Russia, or accept Allied intervention and thus invite German attack. It is tempting to root for Allied intervention and get this war once and for all established as a struggle of the democracies versus the dictatorships. But that would be asking too much of the Finns, who have given so much for their freedom already. And it would mean the deaths of countless Swedes and Norwegians as well.
MORE PEACE RUMORS. The International News Service reports Saturday that Finland has asked Germany to intervene in the peace negotiations, in the hope that Nazi intervention with Moscow would prompt the Russians to submit more “reasonable” peace terms. Sigrid Schultz writes in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune that Hitler has sent Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop on a hasty trip to Rome, to persuade Mussolini to mediate the Finnish war. Barnet Nover of the Washington Post says that Stockholm and Copenhagen are full of peace rumors, due in part to the fact that “appeasers are most numerous and most clamorous in the capitals of neutral lands.”
Donald Day reports from Helsinki in Friday’s Chicago Tribune an interesting item indicating that the timing of the peace proposals might have been a Russian blunder -- “These demands were intended to be handed to the Finns when Viipuri was captured, but because the Red army encountered new and more difficult Finnish defenses which kept them outside of Viipuri and because its flanking attacks across Viipuri bay failed, the peace proposals have become known at an inopportune moment.” Mr. Day adds that the Finns have grown deeply cynical about British offers of help. If Chamberlain had really wanted to persuade Stalin to halt the attack on Finland, some in Helsinki believe, the British could have threatened to bomb Russia’s Baku oilfields, depriving the Soviets of the means to commit further aggression.
WHAT THE EDITORS SAY. A lot of commentary in Saturday’s editorial pages on the Finnish situation --
New York Times -- “The nature of Russia’s peace terms may provide the first test in many months of the workings of the Hitler-Stalin partnership. If the terms are so severe that Finland cannot possibly accept them without suicide, it may show that Stalin has been able to override Germany’s wish for peace in the north. If the terms are moderate enough to be accepted by the Finns, they will suggest, at least, that Hitler has the whip-hand....Finland wants only a reasonable chance of continuing that independent, democratic way of life for which she has given such prodigies of sacrifice and courage. It is for the Finns, and the Finns alone, to decide.”
Washington Post -- “The Russian military incompetence which Finland has revealed of course greatly improves Germany’s diplomatic position. When Hitler and Stalin made their bargain last August there were some who thought Moscow would prove to be the dominant partner. That naive idea is now wholly exploded. If anything is clear today it is that a single German army corps could wipe the earth with Russia wherever and whenever such action might seem advisable.”
New York Herald Tribune -- “The Finnish war has become the heart of a complex of forces reaching from the Baku oil fields in one direction to Norway’s territorial waters in the other. How the forces will resolve themselves we may soon know. But in the mean while the Finnish people are still putting up their heroic fight. The lines, and their spirit, are still intact. If a peace which will save their country is possible, the free world will rejoice profoundly; but if it is not, their struggle will still go on.”
Chicago Tribune -- “Finland’s alternative seems to be either a bad peace which leaves it still a nation, or a worse peace which gives it the Red terror and dictatorship.”
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