NORTHERN THEATRE: Happy Birthday to Joe

For his birthday last week Joseph Stalin wanted Finland. By this week it had become pretty clear even to Joe Stalin that he would be some time getting what he wanted. But his Armies made desperate efforts to get him at least a little something. While strengthened land forces hurled themselves at the Finns on three fronts, Soviet airplanes opened a fresh campaign of terror, raining bombs on Finland's southern cities—Helsinki, Viipuri, Turku, Hanko, Tampere and Porvoo. Finns said 350 planes took part in a single day's bombing.

The Finnish defenses were surprisingly effective. Anti-aircraft batteries (equipped with the fine Swedish Bofors guns) potted Russian bombers high in the clear cold air, and Finnish fighting planes brought other bombers down. The Finns claimed they got 50 planes in the week's raids. Furthermore, the Finns had billeted Russian prisoners near schools and hospitals and announced to Joe Stalin's boys that if they bombed these objectives they would get their own men first.

The Finns did a little raiding of their own. Finnish fliers bombed Russian troop concentrations and supply lines for the Karelian Isthmus. They also raided the captured border village of Terijoki, where Red Finns had set up a "People's Government" and equipped a "People's Army" with uniforms from the reign of Sweden's Charles XII (1697-1718) filched from a museum.

Net result of the week's air fighting was to show Joe Stalin that the Finns still did not scare.

Karelian Stall. On the Karelian Isthmus, where the Russians have been pounding at the Mannerheim defenses for three weeks, they gained a little ground, at tremendous cost. Correspondent James Aldridge of the North American Newspaper Alliance described the taking of a hill near the Taipale River, where the Russians have been trying to flank the Mannerheim Line.

". . . The Soviet troops started shelling this hill. . . . They continued shelling it all day, making it untenable for Finnish snipers and blowing almost the whole top off it.

"After this barrage had cleared away ... four thirty-ton Russian tanks appeared from a timber clump and started advancing across the snowy waste to the foot of the hill. Crouched behind each tank were about twenty men, using it as a shield.

"The Finnish advance lines in timber clumps opened up with machine-gun fire and . . . picked off a few men behind each tank. . . .

"Slowly the snow-clogged tanks advanced to the foot of the hill, with only three-fourths of the infantrymen left. A Finnish mortar or anti-tank shell burst twenty yards from the first tank and the Russian soldiers dropped to the ground. The tank seemed disabled, for it stopped. The three other tanks went on a few more yards to some granite boulders at the foot of the hill, then turned and plunged at full speed back to the woods for more men....

"While the tanks were returning to the woods a Finnish advance machine-gun nest from high boulders on the east opened fire on the Russian troops at the foot of the hill. We could not see the result, but it must have been devastating, for the nest was almost behind the men. . . .