INTERNATIONAL: Bitter Pills

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"Many Moscow residents listened in on the radio this morning expecting every moment to hear an announcement that Soviet troops had crossed the Finnish frontier," cabled the New York Times's Moscow Bureau last week. "In some respects Finland's situation closely resembles that of Czecho-Slovakia in September 1938."

Instead of Adolf Hitler it was Soviet Premier Viacheslav Molotov who alternately cajoled and threatened, and instead of the Völkischer Beobachter it was the Communist Party official newsorgan Pravda ("Truth") that was out to whip up public indignation against the tiny "aggressor."

Russians were told that Finnish Foreign Minister Eljas Erkko had made a speech at Helsinki in which he denounced "Russian imperialism" and cried, "There is a limit to everything. Finland cannot accept the proposals of the Soviet Union and will defend her territory and her inviolability and independence by all means!" Pravda headlined its story ERKKO INCITES TO WAR!, editorialized that this speech "cannot be understood except as an appeal for war against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." In Moscow only the diplomatic-journalistic colony was aware that Mr. Erkko never uttered the words quoted by Pravda but in fact made a conciliatory speech designed to string out further the protracted Finnish-Soviet negotiations (TIME, Nov. 6, et ante).

Meanwhile in Moscow restaurants and on streetcars Soviet citizens could be heard remarking to each other with guffaws, "This Finn has gone mad. He is threatening to hurl a nation of 3,000,000 people against our 180,000,000!"

In Helsinki diplomatic Mr. Erkko remarked easily that the Russians "must have got hold of a wrong translation," but Pravda stuck grimly to contending that Finland's Foreign Minister had shown "exactly the same attitude as that of former Foreign Minister Beck of Poland. He [Beck] too made provocative speeches before the war between Poland and Germany and—as a result of this—provoked the war with Germany."

Big Bolshevik No. 2 did the big talking in Moscow last week. He is broad-shouldered, bushy-mustached, pince-nezed Premier Viacheslav Molotov who looks something like the late Theodore Roosevelt, stutters explosively. Last week, when the Supreme Soviet or Russian Congress met in extraordinary session to admit new delegates from the slice of Poland taken by Dictator Stalin, curiosity was rife as to whether Orator Molotov would again, as in 1937, have to make three great efforts before his speech impediment would permit him to utter the most important cry in Russia: "Long live Comrade Sssssss. . . . Long live Comrade Stttttt. . . . Long live Comrade Stalin!" The long-suffering Premier last week had no trouble and in his secondary capacity as Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs made an extremely long and rambling state-of-the-world speech in which he ticked off Turkey, Germany, Great Britain and France, Japan, Finland and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.