A Price for Finland?

Adolf Hitler was absent. In his stead, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop last week presented the Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle to Dr. T. M. Kivimaeki, Finland's Minister to Berlin.

Perhaps the Germans were worried about Finland's recent overture to the Allies and wished to woo Helsinki with honors. Last week a New York Times correspondent cabled from Stockholm that Vaeino Alfred Tanner, potent leader of Finland's Socialist Democratic Party, and many another Finnish leader were now determined to sue for a separate peace with Russia.

If so, Finland probably will get no help from Britain, with whom the Finns are at war, nor from Washington. Finland must try to deal with Moscow, hoping that reasonable terms can be arranged. According to some reports last week, the Finnish Cabinet of re-elected President Risto Ryti was due for a shakeup, perhaps installing Juho Paasikivi, who negotiated the brief peace with Russia in 1940.

A Russian broadcast denounced President Ryti's re-election as "illegal" and an attempt to bring the Finnish people "to Utter ruin in the interest of Hitler." There was no solace for the Finns in such a stiff Russian attitude but experience has shown that Russian realism might be counted on to realize the military and propaganda values of a Finnish defection from the war. At the same time the Finns could not take solace from the fact that Germany has 100,000 troops in Finland.

The Finns had every reason to want to get out of the war. Whether they had any real chance to get out, on terms short of national suicide, was up to Moscow.

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