Rabbit Bites Bear

Some of the World could understand why the Soviet Government might be apprehensive. Leningrad, industrial and railroad centre of North Russia, birthplace of the Soviet State, with nearly as many inhabitants as all of Finland together, was within artillery range of a country which 20 years ago swarmed with enemy Germans threatening invasion. But most of the World could not forgive the crude cynical fabrication of incidents, lame excuses and low-comedy lies to prove how the mighty but peace-loving Union of Soviet

Socialist Republics, with an overpowering advantage in citizens, Army and Air Force, was "forced" into action against the warmongering Republic of Finland.

The plot for this drama might well have been concocted by Heinrich Himmler in one of his duller moments; the scenery could have been done by Painter Adolf Hitler suddenly turned Cubist; the dialogue could have been written by a slightly tipsy Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels. All in all, the Russian act that led up to its invasion of Finland last week was a weird parody, rather than a Slavish plagiarism, of Nazi methods.

The Finns were suddenly pictured as dreaming "dreams of aggression." The Finnish Government became "marionettes chained to the hounds and incendiaries of war," a "gang of hired bandits of capitalism," "bestial murderers mad with their savage dreams of a Greater Finland up to the Urals."

While Comrade Arkhipov, in Leningrad, was inveighing to his fellow workers against the "bankrupt political cardplayers" ruling Finland, at Kiev factory workers declared they "love to fight," and aboard the Soviet battleship October Revolution sailors met and decided: "The time has come to end the criminal game of the Finns." An interesting aberration came from the Kirov plant workers: "The ruling clique of Finland has reached the limits of madness and has, at the orders of its imperialist masters, declared war on our Soviet Union."

More specific if scarcely more credible was the Soviet radio's description of the start of hostilities. Finnish soldiers, the radio reported, "invaded" the Soviet Union three times on the night of Nov. 29-30. After the third attempt the Red Army lost its patience and at 8 a.m. the war was on (see p. 23). It was notable that the war was 16 hours old before any Soviet newspaper or radio got around to giving communiques.

Until the artillery and the bombs proved he was not fooling, most foreign diplomats in Moscow thought that Joseph Stalin's last wish was an ever so tiny war. They believed until the last minute that Comrade Stalin was merely trying a "war of nerves" on the Finns. So sure was U.S. Ambassador to Russia Laurence A. Steinhardt that there would not be war that he was caught off-base in Sweden, rushed back by special plane to Moscow where he had plenty to do expressing the U. S. Government's ideas on the war (see P-15).

First Pressure was applied on Sunday, when the Red Army reported an incident-on the border which, the Soviet Union claimed, killed or wounded 13 soldiers. Premier-Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov dispatched a note to Finland immediately demanding that Finnish troops be moved from twelve to 15 miles back of the border. On Monday the Finns formally disavowed the incident, replied with a refusal to move their troops unless the Soviet Union did likewise. After that the Finnish-Soviet timetable was crowded with angry notes, inflammatory speeches, useless diplomatic parleys.

Tuesday Comrade Molotov handed to Baron Aano Yrjo-Koskinen, Finnish Minister in Moscow, an emphatic reply to Finland's reply. The Finnish note, he said, reflected the "profound hostility on the part of the Government of Finland toward the Soviet Union and carries to the extreme the crisis in relations between the two countries." The Finnish denial of the border incident, said Mr. Molotov, showed a "desire to deride the victims of the shooting" ; refusal to move troops back "betrays a hostile desire by the Government of Finland to keep Leningrad under threat."

Such hostility, the Premier continued, was "incompatible" with the Finnish-Russian non-aggression pact. Therefore: "The Soviet Government deems itself compelled to state that from this date it considers itself free from the obligations undertaken under the non-aggression pact concluded between the U. S. S. R. and Finland and systematically violated by the Government of Finland. Accept, Mr. Minister, assurances of my perfect respect." Meanwhile, three new border incidents were reported exclusively by the Red Army.

Wednesday there was a fresh epidemic of Finnish "attacks." The Finnish high command ordered troops withdrawn a half mile from the border to make impossible such reports. The Cabinet met early and at noon Foreign Minister Eljas Erkko telegraphed to Baron Yrjo-Koskinen the text of another Finnish note. The note had not arrived when the baron was called to the Russian Foreign Office at 10:30 p. m. There was wide suspicion that it had been deliberately held up in transmission. At any rate, Vice Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vladimir Potemkin had other business to transact with Minister Yrjo-Koskinen. He handed the baron his passport, told him that diplomatic relations between Russia and Finland were broken. When Minister Yrjo-Koskinen got back to the Finnish Legation he found the note and dispatched it to the Foreign Office by a Legation messenger. He himself was no longer welcome there.

In his note Foreign Minister Erkko proposed that the Finnish-Russian dispute be submitted to "neutral arbitration." Meanwhile, Minister Erkko said, Finland offered to withdraw its forces to "such a distance from Leningrad that it could not even be alleged that they threaten its security." It was too late. The Kremlin had decided, and at midnight, preceded by the playing of martial music and by Red Army songs, Premier Molotov took to the radio, the same radio that had just been calling Finns "dirty dogs, clowns and bastards."

It was now clear, Comrade Molotov said, where the "attitude of the present Finnish Government lies." The Government of Finland "doesn't wish to maintain normal relations with the Soviet Union. It continues in its hostile attitude. . . . From such a Government and from its thoughtless military clique we can expect only fresh insolent provocations." For this reason, the U.S.S.R. had given order to the Army "to be ready for any surprise and immediately check possible fresh sallies."

Why the Soviet Government broke a peace it had long preached and plunged into the kind of a war it had time & again decried had many explanations and many puzzles. Perhaps the Kremlin feared an anti-Comintern peace in the West--a peace in which Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain would join together against the U.S.S.R.--and was merely strengthening Russia's land and sea approaches against the day when the "land of workers and peasants" would have to be defended unto death. Another theory was that Dictator Stalin was determined to restore to his country the lands that belonged to the Tsars. If so, then Rumania's Bessarabian territory would be next after Finland on the list of conquests.

A more tenable belief was that Andrei Zhdanov, press & propaganda chief, Heir-Apparent to the Stalin throne and political leader of the Leningrad district, was hipped on the subject of the defense of the Soviet Union's second largest city and managed to get Dictator Stalin alarmed too. In any case, whatever the causes or reasons, the U.S.S.R.'s grotesque impersonation of a bear being bitten by, a rabbit did the U.S.S.R.'s waning prestige and corroding ideals no worldwide good.

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