DECEMBER 10, 1939; LEAGUE OF NATIONS POWERLESS IN INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP

 

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, DECEMBER 10, 1939:

Finn Artillery Hurls Back

Red Troops Attempting to
Land on Southern Coast

Russians Are Heavy

Losers in Two
Clashes

SHIPS SHELLED

Boats Laden With
Invaders Sunk
By Shellfire

HELSINKI, Dec. 9.—Soviet warplanes late today raided airdromes and other objectives in the Helsinki area and also bombed coastal forts, but wholesale Russian attempts to land troops on Finland's southern shores were repulsed.

Late tonight there were no reports of casualties In the air attacks around Helsinki, the first in the metropolitan zone since the third day of the 10-dny-old Russo- Finnish war. The center of the capital itself was not bombed.

Combined Finnish naval, coast artillery and infantry action was credited with having thrown back repeated efforts by Soviet warships in the Gulf of Finland to put troops ashore and thus add a new direction to the invasion.

TWO NEW DEFEATS
Simultaneously, Finland's hardhitting defenders Inflicted two new defeats, huge casualties, on the soviet invaders in the southern Karelian isthmus and the far northern Petsamo battle zones.

Both the Soviet and the reinforced Finnish air forces also  went into action. The Soviets twice raided Finland's vital southwestern port of Hango without inflicting any casualties or damage and bombed a number of villages. Finnish anti-aircraft guns shot down three Soviet planes.

LEAGUE BALKS ON

PROPOSALS TO
EXPEL REDS
Responsibility for A c t i o n
Against Russia Left to
Plenary Meeting Monday
Special Cable to I.N.S.

GENEVA, Dec. 9.—The League of Nations council late today adroitly sidestepped responsibility for any action against Russia by veiling secretly to refer Finland's appeal for support to the plenary meeting of the league assembly Monday. Latin-American member nations, under Argentina's leadership, held firm to a plan calling for expulsion of the Soviet Union but the scheme ran into complications that threatened to dissolve it.

Talk of applying economic sanctions against Russia faded rapidly. Finland did not ask for anti-Soviet sanctions, but for an effort to enforce league arbitration procedure on Russia. That failing, the league might later brand Russia an aggressor and apply sanctions, though that possibility seemed extremely remote.

It appeared that the assembly on Monday would adopt some kind of a resolution condemning the Soviet invasion of Finland in general terms and calling upon both Russia and Finland to suspend hostilities and resume discussions around a conference table.

HOLLAND'S STAND
This, however, was by no means certain in view of the fact that the so-called Oslo group of neutral nations, caught between or near the belligerents in both of Europe's wars, were opposing any league move that might officially brand Russia as an aggressor and thus incur the displeasure not only of the U. S, S. R. but also of Germany.

The Netherlands even went so far as to announce that Holland would in the future decline to be represented with a seat in the league council and pronounced the league powerless to assume any international leadership in the present situation.

PERILS OF HALVING

FINLAND TOLD
Eyewitness Account of
Crisis Given After Survey

By WALTER SCHWARTZ

I.N. S. Special Correspondent.
TORNEA, Finland, (At The Swedish Frontier), Dec. 10—(Sunday) —(INS)—I have just completed a two-day trip from Helsinki across the heart of Finland's famed lake region north to this border town and am able to report for the first time that soviet Russia's Red army actually has advanced more dangerously
into central Finland than had hitherto been believed.

On any arduous journey over sparse roads crowded with Finnish soldiers and refugees, I learned that the town of Suomussalml, an important Finnish stronghold about 20 miles west of the Soviet frontier, has been abandoned by its defenders under increasing Russian pressure.

A large-scale Russian push isexpected to be launched at any moment toward the northern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, aiming at the Bothnian port of Uleaborg or some nearby point.

PERIL TO SWEDEN
Unless this drive can be stemmed, it would neatly sever Finland into two halves and bring the Red army up to Sweden's frontier. This would render further Finnish resistance on the far northern and the southern Karelian fronts extremely untenable, if not  impossible since the Finnish armies would then be completely flanked  and threatened from the rear. Their communications would be broken.

The path of the Russian advance cuts across the narrowest portion of Finland, being only about 12 miles. Apparently, the Soviets have 80 or 90 miles to go before they can reach the vital railroad and highway paralleling the Bothnian coast from Uleabord northward.