Viewing page 14 of 17

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

ment after the first two weeks of war. Yes, the Soviet Union divided the land of the big landlords and gave it to the impoverished peasants. The U.S.S.R. has done more for the oppressed White Russians and Ukrainians in two months than the American government has done for the Negro people and poor whites in one hundred and fifty years.

Behind the war which remains stalemated on the Western Front stands the real war they plan they plan to wage. A war in which Germany, maybe minus Hitler but not minus fascism, will once more do the bidding of the British and French bankers and lead the attack on the Soviet Union.

And this real war has already begun. It started when the Finnish ruling clique obeyed theirs masters' voice (the British and American bankers), and provoked war with the Soviet Union.

Finland is the catspaw this time - and not for the first time either. It's General Mannerheim that's taking up the unfinished business of intervention which he failed to put through for his American and British bosses in 1918 - 1919.

Baron Von Mannerheim is an ex-tsarist officer who executed 15,000 Finnish men, women and children, and imprisoned 90,000, according to the Encyclopedia Britanica, while he was crushing the young workers' government of Finland in 1918. He turned his country into a spring-board for conspiracies and attacks by the big imperialists on the young Soviet Republic across the border.

Finnish generals were given an important job in the first intervention against the Soviet Union in 1919. The British warmakers knew darn well the strategic value of Finland as a gateway to the new Socialist Republic. Twenty years ago, in April, 1919, the London Times declared:

"The best approach to Petrograd [now Leningrad - J.H.W.] is from the Baltic and the shortest and easiest route is through Finland....Finland is the key to Petrograd and Petrograd is the key to Moscow."

[[end page]]
[[start page]]

And our own American Government in those days was not unaware of these "strategic matters."

They did their bit too in writing a bloody page in the history books. Our doughboys tramped the snow of Murmansk and Siberia. Mr. Hoover (back at his old "relief" tricks today), with his relief, was careful to starve the working men, women and children, while he fed the armies of intervention of all nations.

So it's not surprising that the American and British banking interests howl now that their catspaw has been signed. Especially when the People's Government of Finland, which has signed a mutual assistance pact with the Soviet Union, has put forth a program that all true believers in democracy can support. Headed by Otto Kuusinen, this government has proposed: state control over the large private banks and large industrial enterprises; measures for the complete elimination of unemployment; enforcement of the eight-hour day; confiscation of the land of the big landowners, and its transference to farmers having no land or possessing small allotments; democratization of the state apparatus; subsidies for cultural needs; and compulsory universal education.

* * *

We ought to keep some of these vital facts about Finland in mind when we read the newspapers. Our President, Mr. Roosevelt, could do a lot for the cause of peace if he had a mind to. One little thing would be to say a few words, as he once did, about the danger to America of developing a "headline" mentality." But the chances are less than zero that the President will re-issue his famous statement. For Mr. Roosevelt has taken over the lead in the anti-Soviet drive. He's now issuing "moral embargoes" on the Soviet Union and loans to Finland. And the bankers are making whoopee. The House of Morgan, the du Ponts, the Rockefellers, and the rest of the America's "best families" are betting heavily on an Allied