Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1943, Page 192

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LE NORD
adduced from these quarters looks
formal as compared with the deep
and great basis of free, modern
Finland, which, it seems to me,
will appear of itself on the day
when a historian with something
of Sillanpaa’s and other Finnish
authors’ profound historical sense
writes the history of the work of
the Finnish people as it may now
be written, thanks to economic,
historical and ethnographical in-
vestigations, — as it looks in Lönn-
roth’s paternal cottage with its lake
of waterlilies, in the memorial farms
of the country, the museums of the
towns, the archives of the country-
houses and the fields and meadows
of Finland. There a remarkable
unity appears — originally with
concentrating and normative or-
ganization from Sweden, but still
with its own life according to its
own monumental lines.
The historical sections conclude
in Professor Vciinö Voicnmaa’s
paper on “The Development of the
State” — together with Hugo E.
Pipping’s economic survey one of
the most weighty contributions to
the Liberté créatrice. Plere the
reader with particular attention
halts before the discreet and in-
spiring views of the hardest crises of
the country, of the Red revolt and
its liquidation, of the questions of
Áland and Lappo. There is a con-
structive objectivity in all this. As
in Paavo Kastaris paper on “Our
Democratic Custom of Government”'
we here see Finland as the border-
land of the West, not particularly
through its military defence, but
through its development of the
democratic idea, its firm will to be
free by being a politically creative
part of the cultural group to which
it belongs.
Beside the Governor in Rune-
berg’s Fanrik Stal we find here
Eero, the youngest brother in Kivi’s
“Seven Brothers,” with his work
as vestryman, his widened, awaken-
ing patriotic feeling. President
Kallio dropping dead beside Man-
nerheim after completing his very
last duty as head of the state, is the
Eero of our time. Beside him rise
the industrial labourer and the
labour leader. This development be-
longs to the great many things
which in modern life in Finland has
spread the view of the connexion
with the Scandinavian countries as
one of “Finland’s most precious
historical traditions.”
The Liberté créatrice gives a pic-
ture of the work of peace which
had to be given up in 1939, and of
the hopes for a resumption of it
which Finland preserves in the
middle of the war as her dearest
dream and will. Finally I shall offer
a few words on the latter. Prac-
tically every chapter of the Liberté
créatrice ends with a look to the
future, to the problems of the peace,
a question which features of the
work of the happy period in spite
of all may be saved during the
hardships of the time of adversity.
Here a new account, a description