FINLAND: Tangle and Tanner

Britain told Finland last week to stop fighting Russia. His Majesty’s Government, in a curt note, warned the Finns that if they did not halt their attack at the 1939 Russo-Finnish border they would be treated by Britain as enemies, now and after the war.

Germany had already counterbalanced this. The German Government had Finnish Commerce Minister Väinö Alfred Tanner wandering around Greater Germany. Ostensibly on a trade mission, he talked about “our German friends.” The German radio reported that in Vienna he said: “Together with Germany … we shall fight the battle for European culture to a happy conclusion.”

Minister Tanner’s prattling further complicated the tug of war in Finland between pro-Nazi conservative groups, and anti-Nazi Social Democrats, of whom Väinö Tanner is leader.

The Social Democrats were displeased and puzzled when Tanner talked about “our German friends.” They attempted to dismiss his remark by saying he must have had a couple of acquavitas. Though camouflaged with the job of Commerce Minister, Väinö Tanner, as leader of Finland’s largest party, is the strong man of Finland. He hates Bolshevism, but is afraid to accept Soviet Karelia lest Russia win the war and swallow Finland. He dislikes the Nazis, but is afraid to run out of the war lest they swallow Finland.

Between two fires, Tanner last week appeared to have thrown his whole short bulk in with the Nazis. This was an evil portent for the Social Democratic Party−and for democratic Finland. How matters were going was made clearer at week’s end, when President Risto Ryti proposed that elections, due next year, be postponed until 1944 because of the “emergency.”