Onward Christian Soldiers 

[Part 14]

 

 

 

Note

This new version of Onward Christian Soldiers that I’ve compiled consists of the original contents published by Noontide Press in 1982 plus the “missing” text that, for reasons explained below, was in the Swedish version published in 1942.

I’ve also included some supplementary texts here giving the history of the missing parts of Day’s book. Also book reviews by Revilo Oliver and Amazon readers (see Part 1).

KATANA

 

 

Contents

 

 

Maps of Northern Europe & the Baltic States

THE REST OF DONALD DAY by Paul Knutson — 1984

EDITORIAL NOTE by Liberty Bell

The Resurrection of Donald Day — A review by Revilo P. Oliver. The Liberty Bell — January 1983

TWO KINDS OF COURAGE by Revilo P. Oliver. The Liberty Bell — October 1986

AMAZON REVIEWS

__________________

ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

Chapter

Introduction

Permit Me To Introduce Myself * (all new)

1 Why I did not go Home *………………………………. 1

2 The United States  *………………………………………. 7

3 Latvia  ………………………………………………………… 21

4 Meet the Bolsheviks  *………………………………….. 41

5 Alliance with the Bear  *……………………………….. 53

6 Poland  ……………………………………………………….. 63

7 Trips  ………………………………………………………….. 85

8 The Downfall of Democracy * ………………………. 93

9 Jews  …………………………………………………………… 101

10 Russia  *………………………………………………………. 115

11 Lithuania * ………………………………………………….. 131

12 Danzig  ……………………………………………………….. 145

13 Estonia  ……………………………………………………….. 151

14 Sweden  ………………………………………………………. 159

15 Norway  ………………………………………………………. 169

16 Finland  ………………………………………………………. 183

17 England  *……………………………………………………. 197

18 Europe  *…………………………………………………….. 201

19 Epilogue  *…………………………………………………… 204

Index of Names  ………………………………………………….. 205

* Contains new material (dark blue text) missing from original Noontide edition.

MAP

of Northern Europe 1920s (click to enlarge in new window)

MAP

of Baltic States 1920s (click to enlarge in new window)

 

 

 

LIBERTY BELL PUBLICATIONS

June 1984

THE REST OF

DONALD DAY

by

Paul Knutson

Donald Day, who had been for many years the foreign correspondent of the Chicago Tribune in northern Europe, wrote a record of his observations, Onward, Christian Soldiers, in 1942. His English text was first published as a book in 1982. It was printed by William Morrison and appeared under the imprint of the Noontide Press of Torrance, California, As Professor Oliver pointed out in his review of that book in Liberty Bell for January, 1983, the text had been copied, with some omissions and minor changes, from an anonymously issued mimeographed transcription of a defective carbon copy of the author’s manuscript, which had been brought to the United States in someway, despite the vigilance of Franklin Roosevelt’s surreptitious thought-police.

That was not the first publication of Day’s book. A Swedish translation, Framat Krististridsman, was published by Europa Edition in Stockholm in 1944. (That paper cover, printed in red, green, and black, is reproduced in black-and-white on the following page.)

 

 

Copies of this book still survive in Sweden and are even found in some public libraries. There may still be a copy in the Library of Congress, where, however, it was catalogued and buried among the very numerous books of a different Donald Day, a very prolific writer who midwifed the autobiography of Will Rogers and produced book after book on such various subjects as American humorists, the folk-lore of the Southwest, the tourist-attractions of Texas, and probably anything for which he saw a market, including a mendacious screed entitled Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Own Story. By a supreme irony, the Library concealed Framat Kristi stridsman in its catalogue by placing it between the other Day’s Evolution of Love and his propaganda piece for the unspeakably vile monster whose millions of victims included one of the last honest journalists.

The Swedish translation contains some long and important passages that do not appear in the book published in California and are not found in the mimeographed copy. By translating these back into English, I can restore Donald Day’s meaning, but, of course, I cannot hope to reproduce exactly the words and style of his original manuscript. I can also restore from the Swedish the deficiencies of the mimeographed transcript.

It seems impossible to determine now whether the parts of Day’s work that are preserved only in the Swedish were deleted by him to shorten his text when he sent a typewritten copy to the United States or were added by him before he turned his manuscript over to the Swedish translator at about the same time. At all events, the Swedish now alone provides us with some significant parts of bay‘s book and many Americans will want to have Day’s Work complete and entire.

For the convenience of the reader, I have, by arrangement with the publisher of Liberty Bell, included corrections of the printed English text where it departs, through negligence or misunderstanding, from the mimeographed text from which it was copied. I have passed over obvious typographical errors in the printed book, and omitted small and relatively unimportant corrections. For example, near the end of p. 44 of the printed book, the sentence should read, “All reported that the officials of the Cheka, later known as the GPU and NKVD, were Jews.”

Day did not use footnotes, so the reader will understand what all the footnotes [indicated by the symbol *] on the following pages are my own explanations of the text.

The supplements below are arranged in the order of pages of the printed book, as shown by the note in the small type that precedes each section, The three sources are discriminated typographically thus; Italics show what is copied from the printed text to give continuity.

Ordinary Roman type is used for what is in the mimeographed copy but was omitted from the printed version. This, of course, is precisely what Day wrote in English.

What I have translated back from the Swedish appears in this style of type. These passages, as I have said, convey Day’s meaning without necessarily restoring exactly the words he used in his English original, from which the Swedish version was made.

*****

 

 

Editorial Note

 

Liberty Bell

With the foregoing supplements, we have at last as accurate a text of Donald Day’s Onward, Christian Soldiers as we are likely to have, barring the remote possibility that the manuscript Day gave to his Swedish translator may yet be discovered.

The Swedish translation is pedestrian, as indeed is Day’s English style, but a comparison of the Swedish with the extant parts of the English assures me of the translator’s general competence. In one passage, which we have only in the Swedish, in which Day reports his refusal to become a well-paid and dignified member of our Diplomatic Service with a “little Morgenthau” as an “adviser” to tell him what to do, the translator was evidently confused by the irony of some English phrase such as “executive for a Jew” and reversed Day’s obvious meaning;, this was corrected in the foregoing text.

The mimeographed version is evidently a transcription from Day’s carbon copy, with only such errors as only the most expert typists can entirely avoid. There is, however, one very odd error in the mimeographed version corresponding to our printed page 4 above; it reads “the Great Rocky mountains of the border of Tennessee and North Carolina.” That is geographically absurd, of course, and the Swedish (stora Rijkiga Bergen) shows that Day wrote “Great Smoky mountains,” as we have, printed above. It is probably only a coincidence that the Swedish word for “Smoky” could have suggested, to a person who knew no Swedish, the error made by the typist in California who copied Day’s carbon copy.

When Day relies on his recollection of what he was told years before, his memory is sometimes faulty, and we have naturally made no changes in what he wrote. He makes an obvious error on our page 4, where he says that the Cherokees were driven from their lands and moved to Indian Territory “toward the end of the last century.” Actually, the expulsion of the Cherokee Nation by an American army took place in 1838. The Cherokees, by the way, were the most nearly civilized of all the Indian tribes in the territory that is now the United States and Canada, and it is true that their expulsion from the lands that had been guaranteed to them by treaty inflicted great hardships on them: they lost most of their property, including their negro slaves, and large numbers of them perished as they were quite brutally herded from the Appalachians almost half way across the continent to what is now the southern border of Arkansas.

Ethnologists who have made intensive studies of the Indians of North America (e.g., Peter Farb) regard Sequoyah (Sequoia) as perhaps “the greatest intellect the Indians produced.” He was the son of a Cherokee woman by an unidentified white trader, and, growing up with the mother’s people, regarded himself as a Cherokee. He, however, was an exception to what Day says about half-breeds. Day may have been confused about the date of the expulsion because a few of the Cherokees succeeded in hiding from the perquisition in the wilds of the Great Smokies and were eventually given the small reservation they now occupy east of Bryson City in the toe of North Carolina. There was some agitation about them “near the end of the last century.”

The circumstances in which Day’s carbon copy was smuggled into the United States remain obscure. When the mimeographed transcription was made and first issued, it contained a prefatory page on which an anonymous writer said,

“It is my understanding that this book was published in; 1942, and then merely made an appearance at the book-sellers, when all copies were immediately withdrawn and destroyed without a single copy escaping the book-burners, I was also told that Mr. Day died shortly after this incident.”

The page was presumably withdrawn when its author learned that Day was still alive at that time and an exile in Helsinki, since the Jews who rule the United States would not permit him to return to his native land.

It is curious that the man who made the transcription, which did effectively preserve Day’s work for the future, and who was evidently a resident of California, had heard a somewhat less plausible version of the rumor that was current in Washington in 1943. (See the review by Professor Oliver in Liberty Bell, January 1983, p. 27). It is quite possible that the source of both rumors was an effort by the apparatus of the great War Criminal in the White House to prevent the publication of the Swedish translation, which, as Day tells us in the last item in our supplements, was delayed in the press for two years by a “paper shortage” and it is noteworthy that the paper for it was finally obtained in Finland, not Sweden,* Until the book was finally published in 1944, the enemies of mankind could have imagined that their pressures on Sweden had effectively prevented Day’s exposure of one phase of their activity from ever appearing in print.

[* Day’s book was published by Europa Edition in Stockholm, which, however, had to have the printing done by Mercators Tryckeri in Helsinki. Although copies of the Swedish book have been preserved, Day’s work would not now be generally known — and would be supposed lost by Americans who heard of it — if the anonymous gentleman in California had not issued his mimeographed transcription.]

_______________________

 

KATANA — The Liberty Bell article continues with a list of text to be added or amended to the Noontide edition. All these changes (indicated by the dark blue text) have been entered in this expanded version of Onward Christian Soldiers.

 

 

Word Totals for the Additional Text

Introduction – –

Permit Me To Introduce Myself – 5,738 (all new)

Chapter 1 – 23

Chapter 2 – 307

Chapter 3 – –

Chapter 4 – 653

Chapter 5 – 1,225

Chapter 6 – –

Chapter 7 – –

Chapter 8 – 408

Chapter 9 – –

Chapter 10 – 907

Chapter 11 – 6

Chapter 12 – –

Chapter 13 – –

Chapter 14 – –

Chapter 15 – –

Chapter 16 – –

Chapter 17 – 2,167

Chapter 18 – 1,179

Chapter 19 – 89

Total words in original = 85,311

Total additional words = 12,702

_______________

Total words in expanded version = 98,013

 

 

ONWARD

 

CHRISTIAN

 

SOLDIERS

 

 

1920-1942: Propaganda, Censorship

and One Man’s Struggle to Herald the Truth

Suppressed reports of a 20-year Chicago Tribune

correspondent in eastern Europe from 1921

Donald Day

With an introduction by Walter Trohan,

former chief of the Tribune’s Washington bureau

THE NOONTIDE PRESS

 

 

 

Chapter 16

 

Finland

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Finns are pioneers. There is little essential difference between the Finn of today who is fighting in the forest wilds of Karelia against the Red Russians and the American who crossed the Alleghany mountains 150 years ago to claim new lands. Both love hard work. Both love solitude.

The Finn likes to build his house far from his neighbors. The American pioneer built his cabin far from the fort or blockhouse which protected him from his enemy. Both are hospitable, honest and friendly. Another really great characteristic found in both is generosity. They are generous with their help and with their worldly goods.

This type of American to whom I refer is decreasing in number, unfortunately for America. The Finns, however, are still living in their heroic era which has been centuries long. Their long struggle for survival has developed those human qualities which are most prized and valued.

That is why Finland had the sympathies of the civilized world when she was attacked by the Red Army. That is why she survived. That is why today she is again fighting and is on the winning side and will share the fruits of victory.

[Page 184]

The Finnish defensive war against Russia was the greatest story I ever covered or ever hope to cover. A small nation of less than four million people attacked by a mighty neighbor of 174,000,000. A great fleet of hostile planes bombing the civilian population attempted to break their morale! A powerful fleet which failed in its attempt to blockade sea traffic between Finland and Sweden! A tremendous army which was hurled back time and time again when it tried to overrun the country! A bitter winter with the most severe frosts in fifty years!

Finland is a country nurtured on heroism. From their ancient past come tales of reckless heroes who sought danger to conquer it with intrepid action and quick thinking. From their recorded history come more stories of bravery and endurance against great odds. In days of war they have shown the world how a nation can fight for its life. In days of peace they turn to sport and champions are the peacetime heroes.

Finland is a nation of champions. One of them is my best friend, Hannes Kolehmainen, the first Finnish runner of world fame. He stands out among the great sportsmen and athletes who have carried the name of Finland wide into the world. Hannes and I have been fishing together for almost twenty years. In 1940 we were camped on the Petsamo river. We thought we had enough food with us to last a fortnight. But when our wives built a fire to prepare a meal we would be surrounded by Lapp children, and children are always hungry. I was fortunate the transport “American Legion” was in Petsamo harbor to bring back the Americans from Europe. The ship supplied us with food. One of the little Lapp boys asked Hannes what his name was and when he heard it he couldn’t believe it. Hannes had to pull out his passport from his pocket to prove his identity. The boy had read about Hannes in the Finnish school books.

In his mind Hannes was much more important than the President of Finland. He asked Hannes if he would give him a photograph and write his name on it so he could prove to his schoolmates he had really been fishing with Hannes Kilshamainen. Hannes had a snapshot and wrote on it:

“To my friend Moses from Hannes Kolshmainen.”

Even the salmon in the Petsamo river seemed to know who was fishing for them, for each time Hannes went out he brought back a salmon, whereas I didn’t catch one on the whole trip.

If Finland has more than her share of world champions in many branches of sport, it is because she has so many national and local champions. The self discipline and rigorous training imposed on the individual by the desire to excel in some branch of sport has become one of the essential characteristics of the Finn. It helps, with his other qualities, to make him a good citizen, an almost unequalled soldier, a hard worker, a good comrade and a treasured friend.

[Page 185]

When Finland was attacked by Bolshevik Russia in 1939 she had more friends and well wishers than any other single nation in the world. Her only enemies were communists and their supporters, which included the Jews. It seemed inconceivable to the Finns that their friends would let them down. They were a small nation whose democratic system of government had been successful because their sense of patriotism had not been eclipsed by party politics and because of the inherent honesty and homogeneity of the people. Their cause was just. They were a member of the League of Nations in good standing.

Finland was the only debtor country in Europe regularly paying her debt to America. She knew she had a host of friends in that country. Most of the higher officers of her army had served in the famous Jaeger battalion in the German army during the world war and a large group of Finns were admirers and students of German culture and Finland’s respect and admiration for Germany was reciprocated by the Germans for Finland. Finland’s chief business connections had been with England and the merchant and trading class of the country were warmly disposed towards England, where they thought they could count on sympathy and support. Finland’s relations with Sweden were brotherly for these countries had a common history and had fought and suffered together. Feeling she had the moral support of western civilization and was sure to obtain material aid, Finland defied Russia.

But of all the countries who failed to come up to Finland’s expectations the Americans have the most to be ashamed of. America was not then involved in the war. She was not fighting for her life. Her president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had been preaching noble thoughts for years.

But these uplifting sentiments were not uttered to calm passions or to reconcile antagonists. They were carefully calculated to inflame enmities and provoke war.

The foreign policy of the United States under the Roosevelt Trust contains many shameful pages. The policy of the American government towards the Finnish government during the years 1939-42 is so disgraceful that it will be difficult to conceal or excuse it when writing American diplomatic history. It is not a policy sanctioned by the American people.

In fact, extremely few people, aside from the small Jewish-Judophile clique close to Roosevelt, know what has actually happened. Many Americans also do not know that for the first time in our history a Jew actually lives in the White House, where he has an office. He is Samuel Rosenman, a judge of the Federal court in the state of New York, who draws his salary for this office while he actually performs the office of writing the President’s speeches and acts as his adviser.

[Page 186]

From the first day that Finland was attacked by the Bolsheviks the Roosevelt Trust has been on the side of Communist Russia. This was contrary to the wishes of the ‘American people. But in the United States the foreign policy is a matter which belongs exclusively to the President.

The great majority of the Americans sympathized with and wished to support Finland.

In November 1939, when Minister Passikivi was heading a Finnish delegation to Moscow, negotiating the demands which the Soviet government had presented to Finland, I visited Mr. Eljas Erkko, publisher of the Helsingin Sanomat, the largest Finnish newspaper, who was then foreign minister. In the course of our talk I asked him why he didn’t pick up his telephone and call Passikivi and inform him that Finland had decided to accept;

“that hundred million dollar loan from the United States.”

I said if Finland had not asked for such a loan she should do so and since telephone conversations with Moscow are controlled by the GPU this news would come immediately to the ears of the Foreign Affairs Commissariat and might have a favorable influence on the critical negotiations then proceeding. Erkko said he had thought of doing that very thing and suggested it to Mr. Risto Ryti, then prime minister, who turned it down. I then visited Mr. Ryti who told me the government had instructed their minister to Washington, Mr. Procope, to approach the American government and ask for a loan of sixty million dollars. I asked if I could send a story from Helsingfors [Helsinki] about these negotiations. Mr. Ryti asked me to keep this information confidential, as the American Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau had specially requested Mr. Procope to keep this matter a secret.

This alarmed me. I told Mr. Ryti that Morgenthau was a Jew and no Jew, whatever his position, would undertake anything which might harm the Jewish government of Bolshevik Russia. I further told the Prime Minister that while many Finns did not know it, world Jewry considered Finland as an anti-Semitic country, because Finland had always opposed permitting additional Jews to immigrate and settle in Finland. I said I suspected Morgenthau was going to sabotage this loan for Finland and I urged I be permitted to send a dispatch to The Tribune as I felt that once Finland’s request was placed before the American people then aroused public sentiment might compel the government to take favorable action.

Mr. Ryti said that in view of Mr. Morgenthau’s request he could not grant me permission to send the story. I agreed to respect his wishes and said if I could obtain proof that Morgenthau was sabotaging this loan I would have to report the matter to my newspaper. I did report it the following February when it came clear beyond any shadow of doubt that Finland had been betrayed. This story was published in The Tribune.

[Page 187]

The loan did not suit the purpose of the Roosevelt Trust. Finland’s request for financial help was made public only after the Red Army had invaded Finland. The Roosevelt Trust prevented a bill from being introduced to Congress to authorize a loan to Finland. Instead it reintroduced another bill, which had been previously defeated by congress, authorizing the capital of the Export Import Bank (a Roosevelt creation) to be increased another $100,000,000. Although Finland was not once mentioned in this bill the Administration called it “The Finland Bill” to deceive public opinion. To obtain the necessary votes for its passage through Congress the Roosevelt Trust finally promised to loan twenty million dollars of this sum to Finland. Although Finland’s need was urgent the passage of the bill was delayed. Pressure of public opinion compelled the government to promise another $10,000,000 to Finland, but when this money became available, it was too late to be of any use to Finland in her war with Russia.

During the winter war, the Roosevelt Trust facilitated with all the means at its disposal the purchases of the Soviet government in the United States and the export of these goods to Russia. Some of these goods were paid for in gold; the greater part was sold on credit. They included high proof gasoline for airplanes, copper and its alloys, molybdenum and metal working machinery. The only thing Roosevelt did for Finland was to voice a very mild rebuke to the American Youth Congress, a communist inspired gathering, which met in Washington and refused to pass a resolution condemning the invasion of Finland. Roosevelt remained silent about the aid his government was affording to Russia, although this was bitterly attacked in the press.

American propagandists who today are spreading the lie that Finland is under German control and obeying German orders have short memories.

They forgot that with the beginning of the European war the American government permitted the British government to control all American mail with Europe and supervise all American trade with Europe. Every Finnish ship which called in an American harbor to obtain a cargo of goods bought in the United States had to obtain a British naval certificate before it could return to Finland. Every letter which I have received from the United States since September 1939, has had to pass through British censorship. After the United States entered the war I received only two letters from my newspaper and their only content was clippings.

[Page 188]

Still more remarkable was the fact that the American State Department (Foreign Office), complying with British desires, established in 1939 a secret censorship in Washington with a Jew in charge, to censor all mail written by Americans working in official representations abroad who used the diplomatic pouch to send mail to their relatives and friends in the United States. For a time it looked as though the United States was completely under British control. But now the Roosevelt Trust has involved the United States in war and fixed its talons in America’s breast. It feels strong enough to begin to issue orders to England instead of taking them.

In contemplating their neighbors and the world, the Finns have come to regard themselves as a small country. In interviews with Finnish officials and conversations with friends over a period of years I have heard them frequently mention themselves as a small nation. Today this view greatly influences Finland’s outlook upon the world and her foreign policy.

But this is not entirely true. The Finns may be small in numbers but their moral stature is great. They present exactly what the governments of Great Britain and the United States allege they are fighting for, democracy and the right of small nations to exist.

Because Finland still exists as a small nation with a democratic form of government and with an independent foreign and sovereign domestic policy without any alliances, she is today a tremendous obstacle in the policies and pretensions of the so-called Anglo-Saxon nations. This is why Great Britain descended to the depths in declaring war against Finland. It also explains why the United States threatened to break diplomatic relations if the Finns continued their offensive operations against the Red Army which, according to Jew-controlled Washington, threatened the vital interests of the American government.

Physically Finland is a small country. Geo-politically she is an important country. Morally she is a great country. Finland’s moral position and influence in the world of today is out of all proportion to her size. It is impregnable. Finland has not changed her policies, or her position, or her form of government. She fought for her life during the winter war. She is fighting for her life today. The mere presence of Finland in the world war fighting has deflated the propaganda balloon of the hypocrite-AngloSaxon-hooligan-Bolshevik alliance. Every person in England and the United States who sympathized and prayed for Finland during the winter war realize today there is something radically wrong in the world war line-up.

[Page 189]

Just so long as Finland keeps on fighting, all those Anglo-Saxon people who remember Finland with respect and liking know that Finland has not changed, but that their own governments have changed. The fact that Finland is again fighting Bolshevism confirms that Finland has not changed, neither has Bolshevism changed. So all those people in the Anglo-Saxon countries who contributed to Finnish relief in the winter war must now realize, every time they think of Finland, that they are on the wrong side in the present world struggle. It would pay Finland well to remind them as often and as energetically as possible that Finland is fighting the same fight against the same foe. If her many friends are on the other side in this conflict it is because the Jews have succeeded in placing them there.

These people do not understand what has happened in Europe. That Europe has revolted. It is a revolution against spiritual, cultural and economic corruption. They do not understand that if the Jew had the ability and intention to govern and administer to the spiritual, cultural and economic needs of nations, they had that opportunity to- show the world their talents in Russia. What they succeeded in accomplishing in Russia has shocked the civilized world. It is a strange fact today that every Jew, whether he be living in England, America or any other country is just as interested in seeing Soviet Russia win her war for survival as he is in seeing England or America win their conflicts; perhaps even more so.

The Jew realizes that with the collapse of the Soviet government more than half their battle to conquer the world has been lost.

This also explains why the tremendous propaganda organizations controlled and directed by the Jews and their puppets are trying to convince the inhabitants of Great Britain and the United States that today Europe is coasting downhill towards destruction. That these organizations are attempting to bluff and bully Finland into signing a separate peace with the Soviet government. They are trying to convince the people of Great Britain and the United States that, together with Jewish-Bolshevik Russia, they can lead the world towards a better future. They are vainly seeking a propaganda formula which will have the same magic effect upon Europe as President Wilson’s fourteen points. These swindlers are trying to tell the nations who have suffered from Bolshevik bestiality that a new Russian government and new Russia, civilized overnight, will evolve from this war. The Anglo-Saxons have openly admitted their war aim is to control the world, whereas they have been unable to control the predacious elements in their own countries.

Finland’s fight for existence has bared this fraud. Finland’s sacrifice to the cause of human freedom has stripped the hooligan-hypocrite alliance of all their pretensions to the sanctity of their motives. And the longer Finland fights the more honor she gains and the longer the United States and Great Britain fight on the side of Bolshevism the more shame they reap. All the nations fighting Bolshevism have gained in honor. But they have gained something more, a sense of common destiny and comradeship which is giving birth to a new conception of life and the future.

[Page 190]

The United States which fought in the first world war and the United States which was conscripted into World War II are two different nations.

The end of the first world war found the nations of Europe looking to the United States with hearts high with hope. Today they had better regard the Roosevelt regime in the United States with fear and loathing. Neither Europe nor the world can expect a better future to come from Washington. The Roosevelt policy is the policy of the Dirty Dollar.

When I was a small boy living in California a Medicine-Man came to town. These Medicine-Men were a product of the back-woods period of American development. They manufactured their medicines themselves.

They were always accompanied by two assistants, one a Negro banjo player and the other an honest-to-goodness Red Indian in full war paint and feathers. The Medicine-Man would hire a hall and invite the local residents to his entertainment. The Negro would play his banjo and sing funny songs. The Indian “Chieftain” would perform a war dance. Then the Medicine-Man would extol the marvelous qualities of his magic mixture, guaranteed to cure everything from cancer and tuberculosis to ingrown toenails and pimples. This medicine was sold for one dollar a bottle and he would frequently dispose of twenty five or fifty in the course of an evening. The majority of the audience recognized the Medicine-Man as a crook. But they regarded him as an amiable charlatan and purchased his wares more in gratitude for the entertainment he injected into their drab, homespun lives than for its purported healing-qualities.

This old time medicine-man today has his successor in President Roosevelt who, with Churchill playing the banjo and Stalin doing the war dance, is trying to sell his four falsehoods in the fancy bottle of the Atlantic charter to the world. But the new Medicine-Man is having a more difficult time. His audience is neither appreciative nor tolerant of his rosy dreams of a gloomy future. His Negro is singing out of tune. His Indian Chieftain just stinks while his medicine has a skull and crossbones on the bottle.

During the summer of 1939, the war clouds seemed far away from Finland. For many years Finland had been dreaming that someday the Olympic games might come to Helsingfors [Helsinki]. That dream seemed to be approaching realization. Work was being rushed to enlarge the wonderful new sports stadium. A new hotel was being completed. Others remodeled their premises so that they could house additional guests. Finland was discussing how many points she could count on her athletes winning in competition with those of other nations. The country was testing its old champions and hunting new ones.

[Page 191]

Why should the parliament appropriate additional money for defense needs when it was necessary to build an Olympic village to accommodate visiting athletes? Why should the army have more new guns when it was discovered the delicately nurtured swimmers from more southern climates could not be expected to show their best efforts in Finland’s frigid water, and so a very special swimming pool, whose waters were to be heated to a South Sea temperature by a large steamplant, had to be constructed.

Only a small section of the population saw the danger. Field Marshal Mannerheim tendered his resignation in July. It was not accepted. University students and other volunteers worked all summer to construct fortification while the Olympic sport installations were being rushed to conclusion.

Finland was happy, just as happy as the father of a large family would be in seeing three of his daughters getting married on the same day. One of the happiest men was the first friend I had in Finland, Amo Hohenthal.

Amo had been working many years to bring the games to Finland. He has sportsmen friends all over the world, for besides being a sportsman himself he is also president of the Sportartikier Company, one of the largest manufacturers of sporting goods in Europe.

Amo is building a villa on the coast some fifty kilometers from Helsinki [Helsingfors].

When he acquired this property he was informed the fishing in these waters could not be equalled anywhere in Finland. Fisherman are usually the most generous of humans and Amo is no exception for he invited Hannes Kolehmainen and myself to help him explore his new domain.

The three of us caught fifty pike, each weighing from one to six kilograms, within three hours. We had never experienced such fishing before and we have never caught as many fish on one outing since that day.

Hannes and I did not mean to spoil Amo’s fishing grounds, but they will never be the same again. It must also be confessed that on that day Amo beat us. He also caught a six kilo salmon.

I had made a short visit to Helsinki [Helsingfors] in July to meet the director of Presswireless, Louise Huot. This is a cooperative formed by The Chicago Tribune to save telegraph tolls on news dispatches to America. These cable tolls are so high that foreign news had always been one of the major items of expense of American newspapers who maintain their own correspondents abroad. Many newspapers utilized this service from Europe to America while both Havas and Stefani used Presswireless to transmit their news from America to France and Italy.

[Page 192]

Presswireless planned to erect a short wave transmitting set in Helsinki to send news of the Olympic games direct to America. Hoot was fresh from the crisis days in Paris. The general situation in Europe looked very critical to us both, but the happy spirit of optimism and expectation prevailing in Helsinki [[Helsingfors] was contagious. We obtained permission to operate the station without the slightest difficulty. Hoot returned to Paris and I went back to Estonia to complete a fishing trip which he interrupted.

After returning from Koenigsberg in September and covering the Polish debacle from Riga, I returned to Helsinki early in October. The Leningrad Pravda and Krasnaija Gazet had published some threatening articles against Finland. As this could not have been done without the knowledge of the Foreign Affairs Commissariat it appeared as though Moscow thought her non-aggression pact with Germany presented an opportunity to pressure Finland. For Finland to be threatened with war seemed almost unbelievable. But many unbelievable things were happening in Europe.

The Finnish-Soviet crisis attracted more correspondents to Helsinki than had ever been there at one time before. Each night we gathered in the foreign office to hear the latest developments. On one evening one of them complained bitterly because there was no news. He represented a French news agency. If you only knew how much front page space the French press was devoting to Finnish news you would have some for us, he protested. The Finnish diplomat was so surprised he seemed at a loss for a reply. So I asked the Frenchman if it was not true that France was also in some difficulties at the moment, that I had heard something somewhere that France was actually engaged in war herself. This calmed him for he had not been a newspaperman very long, in fact up to a few weeks previous he had been a language teacher. Another temperamental correspondent, an Englishman, exclaimed petulantly on another evening:

“I don’t see any use in coming to your press conferences. I get most of my news from the Moscow radio anyway.”

I urged him to apologize for this remark, but he refused. He remained in Finland throughout the winter war, but he was not permitted to make any trips to the front. Temperament is a good quality in a correspondent, but it should be kept under control. I am afraid I have also sometimes sinned in this respect.

The end of November approached and there seemed a lull in the Finnish-Soviet crisis. I visited three of my friends occupying important posts in the Finnish government asking them if they anticipated an attack by the Soviets at the beginning of winter. They all replied in the negative, but said they expected a very serious crisis in the spring.

[Page 193]

America’s great harvest festival, Thanksgiving Day, falls on the last Thursday in November and for many years it has been our custom to pull out our dining room table as far as it will go and invite friends of many nationalities to join in eating the turkey. I had already invited guests for a dinner at our home in Riga, so we returned to act as hosts. I was home just one week when news arrived of the alleged shelling of Soviet positions by the Finns and we left immediately for Helsinki.

Our plane did not take off from the Tallin airfield, for while we were making our short halt there, news arrived of the bombing of Helsinki. The same night we left on a small Estonian steamer for Stockholm escorted by two Estonian torpedo boats as three diplomatic couriers were on board.

The Soviet garrison at Baltioport held us in the beams of their searchlights as we passed and we were further inspected by Soviet warships.

We arrived in Stockholm the next day and the same night were aboard the Swedish steamer Brunhild en route to Turko [Turku]. Instead of the usual twenty hour passage we journeyed far up the Gulf of Bothnia and crossed under the watchful eye of Swedish planes and Finnish sub-chasers to arrive late the next night at Turko, the first city we had ever seen with a blackout.

Finland was mobilizing. Every means of transport was at a premium. I met Manny Ward, a horticulturist, who had arrived in Turko with a load of Finnish children who were being evacuated to Sweden. Ward offered to drive us to Helsinki, but it was eighteen below zero and the long drive in the open truck over icy roads was not a pleasant prospect. But we telephoned the chief of police, and asked if he could help us get some straw to put in the truck. It was one o’clock in the morning when we filled the truck with straw from the prisoner cells. We started on our freezing journey. Ward was exhausted, for this was his third trip with evacuees.

Helsinki seemed deserted. I discovered that the American military attache Major Haynes was largely responsible for starting a panic. He phoned everyone he knew, warning the Bolsheviks were going to send over 300 bombers.

I did not think the Bolsheviks would intensify their air attacks and anticipated their raids would only be attempts to terrorize the population.

[Page 194]

For many years Moscow had been working and intriguing for a future alliance with the United States. Roosevelt’s recognition of the Soviet government and the predominating influence of the Jews in his administration increased Moscow’s hopes that the United States would recognize their government as an ally and help in the communist plans to overrun Europe. The war in western Europe had thus far proved a disappointment to the sensation-loving American newspaper readers. The first air bombardment of Helsinki had received an enormous amount of undesired publicity in the United States.

Finland received remarkable publicity during the winter war. This was because of her courage and her desperate battle for national existence. It is hardly fair to blame military authorities for the difficulties placed in the way of the correspondents in their effort to cover the Finnish-Soviet war.

All general staffs must be secretive.

Many of my colleagues who arrived in Helsinki to cover the winter war came with the idea they were going to write Finland’s obituary. Since I had been in northeastern Europe longer than any other foreign correspondent, I was often asked about the situation. I have always been an optimist about Finland’s future and was convinced she would survive her war. So I tried to convince my colleagues that Finland was going to survive and her cause was not as hopeless as it appeared to be to many.

For the Soviets the war was unexpectedly fierce. As it proceeded Finland began to receive offers of help from England and France.

Although these countries carefully avoided any mention of declaring war against Russia. The Finnish campaign had revealed many shortcomings in the Red Army which had to be remedied. So Russia again offered peace to Finland. The reasons for Finland rejecting the first peace offer have not been made public. Finland finally accepted a hard peace with Russia.

With the outbreak of war Finland introduced censorship for the first time. With the exception of the daily military communique all dispatches had to be submitted to the censor for control before telephoned or telegraphed abroad. The press room at the Hotel Kamp where we gathered to await the return of our stories from the censor was the scene of many mock tragedies.

I don’t think any of us escaped being censored at one time or another.

One of my Finnish friends occupied a high government post. I called on him occasionally, for he was in daily touch with the general staff who kept him informed about all developments at the front. He sometimes gave me this information and I had his permission to use it. I would hurry back, write my story and submit it to the censor with the respectful assurance I had obtained the facts from the best possible source and they could be corroborated. These stories were all censored. It was heart rending to have a twenty-four hour scoop on my colleagues and not to be permitted to send out the story.

[Page 195]

My greatest moment in Finland was one of the greatest moments of my life. It happened in Sortavala during a severe bombardment in the winter war.

We had been carrying furniture out of burning buildings for hours. A small boy came running up with a message that we should not shoot as some Finnish planes were coming over the town. We watched and waited expectantly. At noon 86 Soviet bombers had attacked SortaNala. During the afternoon, squadrons of 32, 18 and 16 planes had dropped bombs. We waited for the Finnish machines.

At last we heard a motor. One lone fighter plane crossed Sortavala en route to Pitkaranta where they were fighting. Just one airplane. Not a single person thought of the odds against the Finn. They were as confident in him as they were in themselves. Not one person thought of defeat.

That was the fighting spirit of Finland I saw that afternoon. I felt myself a better man because of my contact with it.

 

 

 

 

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NOTES

 

* Images (maps, photos, etc.) have also been added that were not part of the original Noontide edition.

 

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Knowledge is Power in Our Struggle for Racial Survival

 

(Information that should be shared with as many of our people as possible — do your part to counter Jewish control of the mainstream media — pass it on and spread the word) … Val Koinen at KOINEN’S CORNER

 

 

Version History

Version 2: Dec 8, 2019 — Re-uploaded images and PDF for katana17.com/wp/ version.

 

Version 1: Published Apr 1, 2015