Helsinki Nudged

Last week a sudden order from the State Department sent six members of the American Legation at Helsinki flying off to Stockholm with their families. Left to carry on with one clerk, one telephone operator, was Charge d'Affaires Robert M. McClintock. Left to stew and wonder was Finland--at war with the Russians, bludgeoned by Germany, and now roundly rebuked by the U.S.

Just what brought on the rebuke, the State Department did not say. But it was the latest in a long series of indications that the U.S. Government was fed up with Finland's role as a Nazi ally, and with Finland's submission to tightening German control. Last July, the U.S. closed its consulates in Finland. In December, Minister H. F. Arthur Schoenfeld left for Washington, ostensibly to report. Soon afterward, the Finnish Information Service in the U.S. was suspended by U.S. order. Recently Minister Schoenfeld, while retaining his title, has assisted Herbert H. Lehman in the Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation.

So far unable to find a way out of the war or an escape from Axis domination, the Finns knew what to fear next. A Helsinki dispatch expressed the forlorn hope that the U.S. move "would not mean a final breach in relations."

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