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Fiction. The frontier incident was news to the Finnish Government. Border outposts were telephoned; the only noise reported on the frontier was that of Russian soldiers practicing trench-mortar firing and hand-grenade throwing. President of Finland's National Defense Council Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim toured the border that day and heard of no firing. A Finnish Government spokesman concluded that the entire incident was "completely untrue." At Helsinki the Government had no intention of ordering troops to retire from a frontier fairly jammed with Red Army contingents. To withdraw from back of their fortified line would be something like the French, on the Western Front, evacuating the Maginot Line.
Meanwhile, inside Russia the threats came thicker & faster. Unlike anything so far seen on either side of World War II, students and workers staged great popular demonstrations in favor of war, demanding stern action against the "Finnish militarists." Moscow troops even got together and handed out statements declaring that there was a "limit to patience" and asking the Government to "bridle the [Finnish] provocateurs of war." Foreign newsmen were allowed to send out reports of huge concentrations of Soviet troops in the Leningrad district which, it was said, were ready for action. The Moscow radio called upon the Finnish people to overthrow their government and "escape the fate of Poland."
All appearances indicated that now that Finland's lakes were frozen solid enough to support Army movements, Dictator Joseph Stalin meant to have a Finnish war—unless he was playing a gigantic game of bluff to the very end. Whether bluffing or not, the Finns took no chances. They closed most of the channels leading into the port of Helsinki preparatory to mining, and the little Army on the Karelian Isthmus braced itself against an increasingly probable attack.