NORDIC STATES: Mighty Fortress

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One-sixth of the population of Finland had fled from their homes last week, terrified lest a Russian invasion should follow up the still secret demands of Joseph Stalin. Peasants abandoned their farms along the Soviet frontier, the men joining the Finnish Army, the women and children plodding on foot to refugee camps in the interior. They had to walk because the Army was obliged to seize all horses and carts in the frontier districts for its service of supply. Most of the fleeing refugees left behind all their possessions, except what they could carry in a few bundles, but occasionally a strapping Finnish housewife could be seen panting down the road with her precious Singer Sewing Machine on her back.

From such a countryside not yet at war, but grimly preparing for the worst, did Finland's gruff, humbly born, dark-bearded and deeply beloved President Kyosti Kallio last week depart. He left Helsinki by air for Stockholm to confer in desperate earnest with the three tall, umptigenarian Kings of Scandinavia, all markedly democratic, each a devout Lutheran and all keenly aware that the unleashed might of ruthless, un-Christian Bolsheviks and Nazis now menaces the peaceful Nordic States.

Nazi Hitler, many Scandinavians feared last week, may shortly begin trying to force Sweden, Denmark and Norway into vassalage to Germany by the same threatening tactics which Bolshevik Stalin has employed successfully in recent weeks to vassalize Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and is now trying on Finland. Red Russia, once she got a whip hand over the Finns, would be strategically placed to threaten Scandinavia, unless Germany exerted a counterthrust, and in Stockholm last week the talk was gloomy. Current were such wry cracks as, "We shall soon know whether we Swedes are Germans or Russians!"

"Open Wound." Only the colors of the flags of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland are different, the design is the same—a cross on a plain field*—and wealthy Stockholm with her many lagoons, beauteous "Venice of the North," was a brilliant forest of cross-flags last week as the President of Finland alighted at Bromma Airport with brisk, energetic Finnish Foreign Minister Eljas Erkko.

Waiting to greet them was Swedish King Gustaf V, but discreet silence on tense public occasions is the duty of a constitutional monarch, and His Majesty left it to Stockholm City Councilman Frederick Storm to tell Finland's President what all Swedes were thinking: "If anything wrong should happen to one Scandinavian country it would be of the utmost importance to all of them. Any wound made on any nation in our group would always be an open wound for all."