29.Finland, Another Example of What Hard Work and Intelligence can Achieve amid Hostile Natural Surroundings

THERE only remains one more country before we leave Europe. Turkey today retains little of her former European possessions except Constan-tinople and a small slice of the Thracian plain and we had therefore better save our Turkey for tomorrow.But the Finns are part of Europe, and very much so.

They used to live all over Russia, but the more numerous Slavs pushed them northward until they reached that strip of dry land which connects Russia with Scandinavia. There they settled down, and there they have been ever since.The few Lapps who were living in the forests offered no difficulties, for they moved to Lapland in the Scandinavian peninsula, and were contented to give European civilization a wide berth.

As for Finland, it is unlike any other country in Europe. For tens of thousands of years it had been covered by glaciers.These have scraped the original soil so completely away that today only ten percent of the land is fit for cultivation.The moraines of the glaciers, the stones and the dirt carried down by these slow-running rivers of ice had filled up the ends of a great many valleys.When the great thaw set in, these valleys were filled with water, and that was the origin of those endless mountain lakes with which Finland is dotted.The word“mountain lake”,however, should not call forth the image of another Switzerland, for Finland is a low country and rarely rises above a height of 500 feet.The number of these lakes is around 40,000.Together with the marshland that stretches between them, they occupy 30% of the total area of the state.They are entirely surrounded by those valuable forests which cover 62% or two thirds of the total area and which provide the greater part of the world with the woodpulp necessary for the manufacture of books and magazines.Part of this wood is manufactured into paper on the spot.But Finland has no coal.It has enough fast-running rivers to be able to develop some water-power.But the climate, which is not unlike that of Sweden, turns these rivers into ice for five months of every year, and then the power stations are, of course, unable to function.The wood therefore has to be carried away by ships.Helsinki(Helsingfors until the late war)is not only the political capital but also the chief export-harbor for Finnish lumber.

But ere I finish this chapter, let me draw your attention to an interesting object lesson of what education may do for a people. The granite bridge connecting Scandinavia with Russia was entirely inhabited by people of Mongolian origin.But the western half, the so-called Finnish half, was conquered by the Swedes while the eastern half, inhabited by the Karelians, became Russian territory.After five centuries of Swedish influence and domination, the Finns of the east had become a civilized European nation, superior in many ways to several countries which enjoyed a much better geographical situation.But the Karelians, after an equally long period under the rule of the Russians, who some day hoped to exploit the riches of the Kola peninsula and the Murmansk coast, were exactly where they had been when the Muscovite Czars first insisted upon their submission.Whereas in Finland proper, which did not get in touch with Slavic culture until the year 1809 when Sweden lost this province to Russia, the number of analphabets is one percent, it is 97%in Karelia, which has always been under Muscovite influence.Yet the two people are the same and probably have the same natural ability for spelling c-a-t cat and t-a-i-1 tail.