Word: finlander
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Great Britain. In a terse two-minute speech in the House of Commons, Neville Chamberlain dryly repeated that somehow, some way Britain would have sent men had Finland asked for them. Up jumped Leslie Hore-Belisha. The Finns, he said, had repeatedly asked for both materials and men. It was shameful "to plead as an excuse a pure technicality." Prime Minister Chamberlain politely corrected his former War Secretary. Materials they had asked...
After the squabble had been going on for some time, in walked another great emotionalist, David Lloyd George. On his feet to talk about food problems, the veteran (who repeatedly warned Britain to stay out of Finland rather than join war with Russia) mournfully declared: "It is the old trouble-too late. Too late with Czecho-Slovakia, too late with Poland, certainly too late with Finland. It is always too late or too little or both, and that is the road to disaster...
France. Premier Daladier announced that 50,000 Allied troops had been standing by ready to go to Finland's aid-an announcement too late to be of any military use and obviously intended merely as a talking point for the Finnish peace commissioners, then in Moscow. It also did its bit to shift the onus for Allied delay on to Scandinavia. "Our help in men," he said, "depends on Finland's appeal. . . . Why have we not received this appeal? It is because the Governments of Norway and Sweden have taken the position that they will oppose the passage...
Then came the terms, and despair. The parties were canceled, the laughter ceased. A horrible realization fell like a blanket of wet snow on the three countries: not only was Finland defeated; her neighbors were threatened within an inch of their lives...
...Swedish Government protested that it had been double-crossed. The terms it had forwarded as intermediary had been changed, dreadfully. Sly Viacheslav Molotov had said nothing about that Kandalaksha-Kemijärvi railway, which would be not only a steel chastity-belt clamped across Finland's waist but also a weapon to jimmy Sweden's door...