Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1943, Page 190

1/2
LE NORD
that the strong, good spirit which
has surmounted so many obstacles
and been able to stand great sacri-
fices, will prove a lasting gain,
when, besides the words on the
future offered in the other chapters,
one reads also the words with which
Professor Carolus Lindberg, the
architect, concludes his general
characterization of independent
Finland’s advance in the sphere of
architecture: “A rebuilding of all
that fire and sword have destroyed,
the creation of new homes for those
to whom the war has directly or
indirectly broken the ridge of the
house, is an honourable task to the
body of Finnish architects, a front
at which they are to fight for the
establishment of the independence
of the country.” Those who have
watched e. g. the activity of Alvari
Aalto, the modernist architect,
during and between the wars after
1939, have seen the reality behind
the programme as formed by one
of the leading younger architects
“freed from the conventional view
of one-sided artistic creation and
realizing the merits of rational
thinking and constructively clear
forming” (to quote Carolus Lind-
berg’s characterization of Aalto and
his contemporaries).
To recapitulate: In chapter by
chapter we find new orientation,
work for the future, discovery of
the peaceful possibilities of the
country itself! In contrast we see
the same people’s efforts under
compulsion when misfortune came,
in P. Huhtala’s chapter on “The
Army of Our Wars of Indepen-
dence.” What Antti Kukkonen has
to relate about the sports of Fin-
land! How alluring is not the picture
of Finland’s tourist roads drawn by
Ragnar Numelin after an amusing
sociological introduction starting
from medieval “restlessness”! Being
himself at once a sociologist and
a diplomatist, the author belongs
to those who through his chapter
reminds us how in Finland scientific
and other interests are maintained
even if the young state from 1918
on has taxed the strength of
people. The efforts of Wester-
marck, Verner Söderhjelm, íiirn,
and the other great university pro-
fessors are emphasized here. — To
the best known and most admired
features in this picture of many-
sided cultural activity also belongs
music in the country of Sibelius,
here treated by Toivo Haapanen.
The Liberté créatrice for that
matter needed no historical intro-
duction. Young Finland with all her
new features appears as a unit of
her own, with a claim for interest
in the name of these twenty-five
years. And properly this is the most
interesting thing about this book.
However, we are exceedingly grate-
ful for the historical background
of the Finland of the twenties and
thirties given in two retrospective
chapters of the Liberté créatrice.
One of Finland’s leading poli-
ticians and teachers of constitu-
tional and international law, Rafael