Secondary outcome of peace in the North last week was a journey undertaken by Adolf Hitler down to Brennero, Italy to talk more peace and more war with his ambiguous Fascist partner. For Germany the Russian victory looked fine. Her Swedish iron ore was safe. Her northern flank was shielded. Her prestige was generally conceded upped. Russia was now free. The Allies and their unfulfilled promises were fair bait for sarcasm.
But the first reaction to the war's end was otherwise. Like torrents freed by the sudden thawing of some great northern river, the peace let loose a worldwide flood of emotions — sorrow, anger, fear, pride, guilt, frustration, shock, hatred. On the one side, tearful Finns quoted an old Nordic saying: "Sorrows are our reins, bad days our bridle." On the other, the Russians laughed, drank beer, slapped each other's backs, praised their Red Army "defenders." But among the friends and foes of each side there was a bitter search for reasons, a hunt for scapegoats, a vindictive beating back & forth of the shuttlecock of blame.
Great Britain. In a terse two-minute speech in the House of Commons, Neville Chamberlain dryly repeated that somehow, some way Britain would have sent men had Finland asked for them. Up jumped Leslie Hore-Belisha. The Finns, he said, had repeatedly asked for both materials and men. It was shameful "to plead as an excuse a pure technicality." Prime Minister Chamberlain politely corrected his former War Secretary. Materials they had asked for, but not men.
But Mr. Hore-Belisha was not satisfied. Had the Allies qualified their offer in such a way as to make the Finns think the assistance would be too feeble? This the Prime Minister declined to answer.
After the squabble had been going on for some time, in walked another great emotionalist, David Lloyd George. On his feet to talk about food problems, the veteran (who repeatedly warned Britain to stay out of Finland rather than join war with Russia) mournfully declared: "It is the old trouble—too late. Too late with Czecho-Slovakia, too late with Poland, certainly too late with Finland. It is always too late or too little or both, and that is the road to disaster."
Prime Minister Chamberlain agreed to air the whole progress of the war this week. Not a few commentators began predicting a thorough Cabinet shakeup.
France. Premier Daladier announced that 50,000 Allied troops had been standing by ready to go to Finland's aid—an announcement too late to be of any military use and obviously intended merely as a talking point for the Finnish peace commissioners, then in Moscow. It also did its bit to shift the onus for Allied delay on to Scandinavia. "Our help in men," he said, "depends on Finland's appeal. . . . Why have we not received this appeal? It is because the Governments of Norway and Sweden have taken the position that they will oppose the passage of Allied troops across their territory."