THERE IS NIGHT NOW FOR FINLAND

...A just settlement will tend to enforce itself...

...The Soviet drive against Finland was made possible, in some degree, by American Lend-Lease material...

...Hull has not explained the eurious element of lack of reciprocity in this connection...

...It would clear the atmosphere if a resolution could be introduced in the Senate and thoroughly debated, expressing American unwillingness to guarantee, after the war, any frontier that has been drawn in disregard of the desires of the majority of the people living in the territory concerned...

...The case of Finland should provide us with another useful lesson...

...The Finnish tragedy will not have occurred altogether in vain if we concentrate more attention upon this vital war objective...

...Perhaps the war situation was so vast, so complex, and So scrambled that we could not have helped the Soviet Union in its defensive fight against German attack without also conniving at its annexationist aims in Finland, Poland, and the Baltic Republics...

...The injustice inflicted upon a single Jewish officer, Captain Dreyfus, rent France in furious controversy, because the treatment of Dreyfus became the symbol of the favoritism and class prejudice of the reactionary elements in the Third Republic...

...Bigger Stakes Than Finland It is a pity that we do not have, under our political system, some equivalent for the British practice of putting questions to Ministers on the floor of Parliament...

...At the time when There Shall Be No Night appeared, 98 per cent of the American people, according to President Roosevelt's estimate, were in fullest sympathy with Finland...

...Finland's acceptance of military aid from Germany was a tragic necessity, given the desire of the Finns to preserve their national independence...

...All over Eastern Europe it seems that new frontiers may be drawn by force of arms, with little regard for the wishes of the peoples concerned...

...Roosevelt and Mr...

...Soon after the outbreak of the Soviet-German War There Shall Be No Night was discreetly withdrawn from the boards, although there had been no offer from the Soviet Government to rectify the territorial injustice inflicted by the annexation of indisputably Finnish territory after the war of 1939-'40...

...There has been a curious evasion of this vital point in official statements...

...Every precedent in history speaks against the maintenance, for any long period of time, of a coalition of powers after the threat which called it into being has passed away...

...America has nothing to gain and much to lose, morally and materially, by becoming involved in these devious combinations of European power politics...

...An unjust settlement will ultimately break down, no matter how much paper strength is mobilized to preserve it...

...But it sometimes happens that a small country, or a small group of people, or even a single person becomes a focal point for arousing the conscience of the world...

...Roosevelt's remark that American foreign policy was not to be bought for the amount of the Finnish debt payment was a singularly flippant and superficial approach to the question at issue...

...The concrete case of Finland should bring us back from sterile debates about elastic words like "sovereignty" to the far more practical question: How far should we go in underwriting frontiers that have been drawn by force, and in violation of the principle of national self-determination that our government and our people have always regarded as sound and valid...

...It is a natural impulse for some Americans, intent on ending the war, to brush them off mentally with the thought that it is just too bad for the Finns...

...It is no accident that Churchill is willing to sponsor a Communist in Jugoslavia, while Stalin underwrites a monarchical regime in Greece, a conservative regime in Italy...

...There are less than four million of them...

...Finland is only one of many prospective cases that seem to challenge the principles of the Atlantic Charter...

...Coalitions are formed against strength, not against weakness, and there is certainly little reason to anticipate that Germany or Japan will be strong powers if the war ends on an "Unconditional Surrender" basis...

...What is at stake in Finland is more than the fate of the Finns...

...The Finns are a small people in numbers...

...But even to suggest that American interests should be considered on a plane with those of other countries associated with it in the present conflict is considered bad form, smacking of wicked "isolationism" or "nationalism," in some circles...

...At least this attitude is more creditable than the retailing of second-hand Communist fiction about "fascist" Finland, the terrible menace to the peace-loving Soviet Union...

...First, is it vital to American security (the supposed reason for the adoption of the Lend-Lease Act) that the Soviet Union should overrun Finnish territory, annex a historic Finnish city, Viipuri, and impose on Finland a crushing indemnity ? Second, in the opinion of the American Government, were the Soviet peace terms just and reasonable...

...The Finns regarded the Soviet peace conditions as deliberately unfulfillable, as designed to justify further Soviet encroachments on their independence...

...This was in the Winter of 1939-1940, when Churchill was speaking of "Finland superb, nay sublime" and President Roosevelt announced that "the American sympathy is 98 per cent with the F#ins in their effort to stave off invasion of their own soil...

...The outline of a Europe that will be divided into British and Soviet spheres of influence becomes clearer...

...Later the play reappeared with the scene shifted to Greece and the flexible playwright doubtless hoped that no friendly dictatorship would invade Greece so quickly as to interfere with the box-office receipts...

...The Russians are our democratic allies, the Finns are a kind of secondary demons, "fascists," or puppets of Hitlerite Germany...

...There Is Night Now For Finland By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN APOPULAR playwright with a distinct talent for shifting his views in line with changing tides of official sympathy wrote a play, There Shall Be No Night, with the Finnish people as the collective hero...

...Finland, as Roosevelt, Churchill, and practically everyone except a few Communists and fellow-travelers recognized in 1939, is a small democracy which was attacked without provocation by the Soviet Union, in violation of a non-aggression treaty which had been concluded at the initiative of the Soviet Government...

...Robert M. La Follette, Jr., has unfortunately been almost alone among our publie men in stressing the superior importance of a just peace settlement, as compared with the technical machinery of enforcement...

...It did not mean an abandonment of a democratic type of regime, any more than the American colonists gave up their ideal of republican liberty when they accepted the aid of autocratic France in the War of the Revolution...

...The purpose of the Lend-Lease Act was to promote the security of the United States...

...Questions of this kind are most relevant to our future policy in the realm of international cooperation...

...If it were obligatory for America to break off relations with a small democracy which our totalitarian ally, the Soviet Union, has attacked, a simple-minded observer might consider that it was at least equally obligatory for Stalin to break off relations with Japan, a militarist regime that attacked us, that is certainly a far more formidable enemy to America than Finland is or could be to the Soviet Union...

...They decided to die on their feet, rather than Jive on their knees...

...Relations were broken off on the ground of the alleged close connection between the Finnish and German Governments...

...In the second Soviet-Finnish War, as in the first, the Soviet Union was the aggressor, bombing Finnish towns for days before the Finnish Government declared war...

...The attempt failed, because the Soviet Government, besides persisting in its annexationist territorial demands, required an indemnity exceeding the whole Finnish national income...

...If we want true peace, not a precarious armistice, we should concentrate on eliminating the root causes of war, not on maintaining an uneasy balance of power among victors on the basis of a division of the spoils...

...Now, so far as official propaganda can achieve such a result, the situation has been reversed...

...As a substitute we have the press conferences of the President and the Secretary of State...

...At the present writing they are still fighting, and in territory, which, judging from the place names, is unmistakably and indisputably Finnish...

...It would be interesting to know the result of a plebiscite in Old Serbia, the largest single political and ethnological unit in the former Jugoslav state, as to the popularity of the self-styled Marshal Tito, the joint protege of Stalin and Churchill...

...The Finns were democratic heroes, the Soviet Russians totalitarian villains...

...This is the element of extreme transi-toriness in the attitudes of national states, one toward another...

...But naturally the questions at these conferences are more apt to relate to news than to principles...

...Some very vital aspects of world organization for peace and of America's participation in such organization are posed...

...Hull has adopted a sort of modern Pontius Pilate attitude, advising Finland to "get out of the war," but never putting himself specifically on record as endorsing the Soviet peace terms...

...However this may be, and I suspect that a more alert and consistent diplomacy could have achieved some kind of tie-up between our Lend-Lease subsidies and a Soviet agreement to abide by Atlantic Charter principles, it is su*ely our obligation now to see that new frontier lines are drawn with as little injustice, as few seeds of future wars, as may be possible...

...Wise Words Of Welles When we remember the praiseful publicity that was lavished on Italy and Japan as partners in the grand alliance against the Kaiser's Germany in the last war and the distinctly less favorable picture of those countries when they were in the ranks of our enemies in the present war, it would seem that any policy looking toward a permanent military coalition as a means of insuring the peace is built on a foundation of sand...

...We should do well to heed some very wise words recently pronounced by Mr...

...Sumner Welles: "It is inconceivable that free peoples who have been fighting to prevent Hitlerism from succeeding in imposing its domination over the world will willingly accept in the years to come, some other kind of dictatorship over their destinies, even though that be exercised by the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain...

...Indeed, these statements leave out most of the relevant facts...

...Finland tried to make an honorable peace last Spring...

...The Facts They Omit The brief official statements about the expulsion of the Finnish Minister and the severance of relations do not tell the whole story...

...For the same reasons the Sacco-Vanzetti case became a national and an international scandal...

...Now night has come for Finland, so far as the official disapproval of the United States Government can bring about this effect...

...It is a pity that no one has put to Mr...

...Hull two questions that would go to the heart of the Finnish question, and would raise issues important not only for the past, but for the future t>f our foreign policy...