Word: finlande
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...costing the Finns some things they value more highly than money. They must house and employ about 450,000 émigrés-more than one-tenth of Finland's population-from the territories the Finns gave up to Russia. How many stayed behind? The highest estimate I got was 40; a leftist told me, "Not even the Communists stayed." So Finland has ruthlessly had to requisition living space. Every person over ten years old is allowed one room (two children under ten count as one adult). Many houses and apartments have three times their pre-armistice dwellers. Farmland...
...Price of Butter. Finland suffers war's inevitable inflation and the lowering of living standards. The Finnmark is officially valued at about one-fifth its prewar (2?) value. But its actual value is about one-tenth. By official statistics, Finnish taxes are almost seven times higher than in 1935. In the U.S. meaning of the word, almost all Finns are workers. The country has exactly 100 people with annual incomes of as much as 1,000,000 Finnmarks-$7,352 at the official rate of exchange. For workers, the cost of living has risen 4½ times over...
This may make Finland sound grimmer than it is. The Finns are cheerful, well dressed and, judging by the violent exercise they indulge in, well fed. They have their freedom. To people whose fiber is almost as hard as the granite ledges that crop out all over their country, that means a lot. The Finns kept their national character and language for centuries under the Swedes and the Czars. They are keeping it now. Said an American who knows them: "These people are nobody's satellites. They're Finns...
...Finland's present program is far from communization or even socialization. One extreme left-winger told me, crossly: "Even Finnish Socialists prefer to make small reforms in the existing capitalist system rather than change it for a new system." Said an industrialist: "Our Socialists are really very sound fellows. They are in the difficult position of having to talk a lot of socialization to attract the masses, without doing any real socializing...
...Their Sturdy Gait. Finland is a country of free speech. The joke I heard most often concerns the 1,000-Finnmark note. On this large, lavender note a group of Finns-men, women & children, all naked-are pictured facing a body of water. There is no ship in the picture, but the presence of one is suggested by a large mooring hawser the people are holding. The Finns delighted in telling me that this "symbolizes Finland in 1952, gazing at the last shipload of reparations leaving for Russia...