Word: finlander
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...return to Paris last week from the Near East of General Maxime Weygand, to report on his preparations for an Allied Army there, added interest to the commentary. With Finland getting hers from Russia, and with Rumania apparently earmarked next, it was newsworthy bluff, if not noteworthy fact, when Generalissimo Gamelin said he feels free now for a war of maneuver-somewhere. His High Command made further show of this free feeling by sending home 3,000 of 27,000 civilian doctors who were mobilized for service in the West. Perhaps spring will find some of these doctors in French...
These thrusts were as dangerous as they were daring. Although Finland might be cut in half laterally and Petsamo crippled as a supply base, the Finns in the south could still get supplies from Sweden by way of the Gulf of Bothnia. Meanwhile the Russian columns were in peril of being cut off from their own bases. The Blitzkrieg was becoming a war of supply lines...
...Russians' overwhelming superiority was slowly being balanced. Italy sent 80 Savoia-Marchettis to Finland and Britain sent 30 Bristol Blenheims. If the sub-zero temperatures and the shortage of daylight did not cripple their effectiveness, the Finns had a good target in Russia's two main supply lines, the Leningrad-Murmansk Railway and the Baltic-White Sea Canal. Aggressive and continuous air attack on the rail line would leave Russia's raiding columns marooned in the wastes of north Finland. By week's end the Finns had taken to the air and were reported to have...
...quiet. Finland announced that she was fortifying the Aland Islands and had mined their approaches. There was no protest from Sweden, which alone might object to the proximity of big guns to Stockholm. Russia announced her blockade of the Gulf of Finland, and Finland said it was illegal. There were some sporadic exchanges between Finnish coastal batteries and Russian warships in the Gulf (the Russians shelled Hanko without much effect), and Finland suspected Russia of planning to land troops before the Gulf begins to freeze around Christmas...
...Finland's Chances depended on what she was playing for. Failure to crack the Mannerheim Line had already hurt Russia's prestige. (In twelve days Germany had taken every major Polish city but Warsaw and Lwow.) Effective help from Italy, Great Britain and especially Sweden (which was most threatened by her traditional enemy's advance) might enable the Finns to hold off the Russians for many months, and in many months many things could happen. One thing that happened this week was a U. S. credit of $10,000,000 to Finland. But if no further military...