Word: evenings
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...immediate pact with Russia, similar to those granted by the Baltic States and refused by unlucky Finland, and turn over the lost province of Bessarabia. In Moscow, New York Times Correspondent G. E. R. Gedye said he had learned "from a highly qualified observer" that Rumania did not even intend to defend the province-had no fortifications and not a single soldier there, was evacuating Rumanian businesses from the area, was mobilizing behind the River Prut, which divides Bessarabia from Rumania proper...
...from Sweden in 1808-09. Alexander had two big advantages: 1) he made a deal with the Swedish gentry in Finland promising them self-government; 2) he waited until February to begin his invasion, when the Finnish lakes were frozen fast and he could bring up supplies by sledge. Even then it took him 19 months to quiet the Finns...
...Stalin's forces found themselves fighting in a blinding blizzard, which grounded aviation, smashed tanks against half-concealed boulders and granite tank barriers, and gave to the Finns, who fight guerrilla-style in small units, with short, light machine guns and short, razor-edged knives, an almost even break. By the end of the second week of the war the Russians, who had thought they were starting a Blitzkrieg, were still hammering desperately at the Mannerheim defenses in Karelia, while in the north (the only section they had succeeded in penetrating deeply) their supply lines were dangerously lengthened...
...where Russia has set up its joke People's Government): "When our tired men wanted to drink, they found all the village wells filled with earth. . . . Hardly had the first Red fighter set foot on Finnish soil when an explosion rent the air-a mine! Mines are everywhere." Even the Russian soldiers were indignant. Writer Virta quoted one as saying: "What cads! . . . They are masters of foul play. How well they make such nastiness...
Isthmian Drive. Even more nastiness was in store for the Russians-especially in the Karelian Isthmus, historic gateway into Finland and the one Alexander I stormed with 17,000 men in 1808. Not only were roads, bridges and buildings mined-even a new bicycle left leaning against a fence was a detonator-but the Finns had utilized the geographical peculiarities of their country shrewdly...