FINNISH PEACE HOPES DIMINISHING? Radio reports Monday night say that Sweden is losing optimism about the Russian-Finnish peace talks now taking place in Moscow. Russian demands are said to be stiffening. The story goes that Stalin’s men now want the Finns to turn over all of the Karelian Isthmus, including Viipuri, along with the whole of Lake Ladoga, and the Arctic port of Petsamo. It’s believed the Finns would fight, even if it meant fighting alone, rather than bow to such humiliating terms.
The news was mixed in Monday’s papers. Walter Kerr in the New York Herald Tribune writes that a four-man Finnish delegation, led by Premier Ryti, has been negotiating in Moscow since last Thursday. The Scandinavian press has claimed the talks are on the “eve of success,” and sources in Stockholm told Mr. Kerr the current Russian terms would permit Finland to keep both Viipuri and Petsamo. But a bad sign was noted Sunday night when Moscow Radio’s Finnish-language broadcast delivered a heated attack on Premier Ryti and called upon Finns to revolt against their “capitalistic government.”
Mr. Kerr believes that it’s all up to the Stalin now -- “Tonight war or peace depends no longer on foreign help, but on the Soviet Union. If its terms are considered by the Finns to be reasonable, the war which began on Nov. 30 will end. If they are not acceptable the war goes on.” (The next part of the dispatch was censored by the Finns.) An Associated Press story from Monday makes much of the Moscow Radio’s “violent” propaganda attacks the day before, and seems to take it as a strong indication that the negotiations are failing. The A.P. says it’s significant that “the nightly Moscow broadcast in the Finnish language had been kept off the air for two days when the negotiations were in early stages.”
Is it really less "hopeful" if the talks fail? I don’t know why anybody who isn’t crazy would ever have been “optimistic” about these talks. The choice seems to be a bad war (Finland gets beaten by Russia), a bad peace (Finland capitulates to Russia), or a very bad war (Allies send troops to help Finland, Germany attacks Sweden and Finland, Hitler and Stalin win and divide up Scandinavia). An utterly lousy choice, if you ask me.
BRITAIN FREES ITALIAN COAL SHIPS. Italy has “bowed” to Britain’s coal blockade, according to the headlines in Sunday’s Washington Post. The news that Britain has released thirteen seized Italian coal ships in exchange for a pledge from Mussolini not to import any more German coal is seen as an Allied victory in the newspapers. The British move came on the eve of German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop’s visit to Rome, where he was expected to enlist the Duce’s help in a new peace effort, or perhaps to solicit an Italian declaration of war on the Allies. “There is confidence [in London] that both missions will fail” due to the Anglo-Italian agreement, says a cable report in the New York Times.
ARE THE ODDS IN GERMANY’S FAVOR? Time magazine has an interesting analysis in this week’s issue marking the six-month anniversary of what the editors call “World War II.” Not counting the Polish and Finnish campaigns, casualties have been incredibly light so far -- 1,400 German soldiers, as opposed to about 1,000 Allied troops. But the British blockade is much more porous than the Chamberlain government cares to admit, and the Germans are “boasting of their Russian and Scandinavian and Balkan resources.” Morever, some knowledgeable U.S. observers think Hitler might have the upper hand. Time observes, rather skeptically --
“No one knows how vast are the reserve supplies laid by [German] Economic Dictator Goring before war started. That they are enough to carry Germany at least through 1940, at full-out war speed, may be the reason why such gloomy wiseacres as U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain Joseph P. Kennedy were unsettling Washington last month with estimates that Germany has a 55-45 chance of whipping the Allies. Just how bad such a whipping would be, just what would constitute winning World War II, is something no wiseacre had yet attempted to say, in the first six months.”
Time also notes more ominously that ordinary Germans confidently expect a German offensive this month, some pinpointing the date as this coming Friday. The reason given is Hitler’s “mystical faith in March,” allegedly bolstered by the Fuehrer’s five personal astrologers. It is true that Hitler has made a number of significant moves in March -- the re-militarization of the Rhineland in 1936, the seizure of Austria in 1938, and the conquest of Czecho-Slovakia last year.
A HOPEFUL SPRING? The same Time article concludes on a not-so-rational, but nonetheless hopeful note -- “As always happens in dark moments in history, an omen was found last week to shed light amid the gloom. In the French Province of Lorraine there is a ‘miraculous’ spring which started flowing exactly three months before the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. It flowed again on August 10, 1918. Last week the Paris press was permitted to say that on Feb. 19, 1940, that spring began to flow once more.”
Could it be, then, that May 1940 will bring peace to France?
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