FINLAND: KALLIO’S DUTY DONE

If Finland had won its war with Russia last winter, its hero would have been Red-hating Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim. As a loser its hero was stocky President Kyösti Kallio, who was so modest that he shunned interviews, who clicked his heels and bowed low before reporters, who wore a knife in his belt as most Finns do, and who, the war over, turned resolutely to the task of rebuilding his country.

Behind him was 36 years’ experience for just such a job. When, peasant-born, sketchily schooled, he won his first Diet seat in 1904, Finland was still a grand duchy under the Tsar of Russia. As Finland won its independence, began to prosper, so did Kallio, becoming fifteen-time Speaker of the Diet, four-time Premier, and, finally, President.

With the zeal for reform which prompted his organization of an antidrinking league as a youth, he kept tackling problems of parliamentary and agrarian inequalities. By 1922 he had pushed through the Lex Kallio, forcing Finland’s big landowners to sell property to small farmers at pre-war prices, built a substantial enfranchised middle class by turning tenants into owners. To consolidate Finland’s gains he worked hard for Pan-Scandinavianism and national defense, though the odds against him proved overpowering.

But sorrowing old President Kallio was too tired to climb the mountain-high problems ahead of him last spring. His country’s best land had been handed over to the enemy. The best of its male youth was dead or disabled. Shortages of food, medicine and clothing were tying up the task of resettling half a million refugees from the ceded areas. And the rest of the world, which had loudly applauded Finland’s gallant fight last winter, turned its sympathies to new underdogs in the fall. Though free and independent, Finland was thoughtlessly classed with the conquered and occupied countries of Europe. Its relief problems were loosely lumped with those of nations under the Axis thumb. Many people misguidedly feared that help for unblockaded Finland, which was in fact in the same international position as Portugal or Switzerland, might hinder Britain and aid Hitler.

By last September President Kallio’s health was ebbing fast. The hasty German press already had him dead from a heart attack. The heart attack was real, but hardy Kyösti Kallio did not die. Instead, two months later, unable to work as hard as Finns think a man must, he resigned.

Last week, to finish the two and a half remaining years of his six-year term, the Electoral College picked Finland’s third hero: suave, British-knighted, wartime Premier Rysto Heikki Ryti, who owns the best Finnish voice for catching U. S. and British ears. As longtime Governor of the Bank of Finland, he can claim most of the credit for the “Finns-are-honest” reputation of his country, has appeared to U. S. citizens the champion of Finland’s determination to pay its war debt.

His duty done, Kyösti Kallio walked approvingly into the Presidential Palace to congratulate his successor. Then, while cheering Finns crowded Helsinki’s streets, waving torches, singing the Finnish Army march, Porilaisten Marssi, he drove slowly off to the station, heading for retirement on his model farm in the country.

Striding down the station platform, before a military guard of honor, he smiled, waved, “Goodby, thanks for everything.” Then, turning, Kyösti Kallio gasped, fumbled at his coat, fell dead in old Field Marshal Mannerheim’s arms.