"Perhaps Norway and Sweden would allow them free passage?"
"Yes," Angela put in. "They certainly would if they come in with you, but not if they stay out through fear of Germany. To do so would lose them their neutral status."
"Not at all, Miss," the Finn disagreed politely. “Finland is a member of the League of Nations. Russia’s attack on us is the clearest possible case of unprovoked aggression which could ever be put before any court. Naturally, we shall appeal to the League. If the League gives its verdict in our favour as it must we shall be entitled to call upon all other states that are members of the League for armed support. If Britain and France decide to give us that support any other League state may permit the passage of armed forces coming to our assistance through their territories without contravening their own neutrality."
Gregory nodded. "Yes. That is part of the League Covenant. If Sweden and Norway feel that they daren't risk coming in themselves they can still let British and French troops through without giving any legal cause for Germany to make war on them. The trouble is, though, that Germany is not a member of the League and the Nazis are the last people to bother about legal causes if it suits their book to go to war with anyone."
Erika lit a cigarette and said slowly: "I'm afraid that's true, Mr. Loumkoski. You see, Germany is so largely dependent on Sweden for her supplies of iron ore and if the Western Powers landed troops in Scandinavia they would probably choose the Norwegian port of Narvik as a base and come right down the railway through Northern Sweden to the head of the Gulf of Bothnia. That would be their quickest route to Finland and at the same time it would cut Germany off from the Swedish iron mines at Kiruna."
"With Sweden still neutral we could hardly pinch the mines, however much we might like to have them," Freddie laughed.
"No," Erika smiled. "You could hardly do that; but the British are very clever at managing things when they want to. You see, there's only the one railway line up there; and over it the ore goes North West for transport from Narvik by sea in winter and south to Lulea for transport by ship across the Gulf of Bothnia when it is free of ice during the summer. It would be found that the Western Powers needed every truck on that railway for transporting their troops and ammunitions to the Finnish front; so, while offering to compensate the Swedes for their loss of business, they would point out that it was quite impossible for them to spare the rolling stock for transporting the ore in either direction."
"Yes, that's typical of our methods," Gregory grinned. "I'm afraid there's no doubt about it that, law or no law, Germany would invade Sweden in an attempt to reach those mines first if an Allied Expeditionary Force were landed in Norway."
"But if the Scandinavian countries do not support us them selves, and refuse to allow other countries to support us by sending troops through them, they will be signing their own death warrants," Loumkoski argued. “Finland can hold out for a month or two but without help we must eventually be crushed by the weight of the Russian masses. Once we are defeated Russia will push West and seize the iron mines for herself with those ice free Atlantic ports on the Norwegian coast that she is so anxious to acquire and the whole of Northern Scandinavia. Surely the Norwegians and the Swedes would rather risk trouble with Germany than allow that to happen?"
"Perhaps. I only hope so, for your sake," Gregory replied.
"If the Scandinavians let troops through, how soon do you think military aid from the Western Powers could reach us?"
"It's difficult to say and it greatly depends on the state of the railway from Narvik, but presumably that's in good condition, and if the Allies acted at once their first troops might be arriving in the battle line in about a month."
Loumkoski sighed with the satisfaction of wish fulfilment. 'In that case we'll be all right."
Gregory's forecast had been given entirely with a view to cheering their new friend. His private opinion was very different. 'the greater part of Britain's Army was still untrained and her air Force was as yet a long way from having caught up with Germany's so it might well be that however sympathetically the Western Powers regarded Finland's cause they could not possibly afford to decentralize their own war effort by dispatching men and planes to Scandinavia. In having taken on Germany they had as much as they could tackle for the moment and at any time it would be a terrible responsibility to add to their burden by taking on Russia as well. Germany had been brought to her knees before and could doubtless be brought to her knees again even if it meant a long war of attrition; but: Russia was a very different matter. Even Napoleon had found: Russia too tough a nut to crack owing to the vast area of her territory and almost limitless resources. If the Western Powers once declared war on the Bolsheviks where could such a war possibly be expected to end? And what a triumph such a declaration would be for Germany. It would be playing von Ribbentrop's game with a vengeance to bring in Russia, with her inexhaustible man power, openly on the side of Germany.
Also, regarded purely as a local operation, the sending of an Expeditionary Force to Scandinavia presented immense difficulties. The British Navy was doing magnificent work but it was already strained to the utmost in tackling the menace of German mines and submarines and in protecting convoys. Russia was known to have a fleet of ninety submarines up at Murmansk in the Arctic a greater under sea fleet even than that with which Germany had entered the war. Once those ninety submarines were loosed against Allied and neutral shipping they might do inestimable damage before they could all be accounted for; and in winter conditions it would be doubly difficult for Britain’s Navy and Air Force to cope with them. In consequence, any Allied Expeditionary Force dispatched to Narvik would be faced with this under sea menace to the troopships and almost certainly with terrific bombing attacks from the German air fleets in addition. It would be one thing to run in a small striking force for the sole purpose of seizing the port and the iron mines, which are only a hundred miles upcountry, just over the Swedish border; but quite another to attempt sending an army of a size to be of any use to the Finns, along the thousand miles of railway that linked Narvik with the Mannerheim Line.
Narvik was only a small port; much too small to accommodate at one time more than a fraction of the armada of ships necessary to transport a modern army of any size with tanks, guns, lorries and the vast quantities of supplies required to keep it in the field; so the disembarkation would be a slow process. The enemy bombers would have time to blow the docks and railway to pieces at their leisure and, in the face of combined Russo German opposition, the landing might well prove another Gallipoli.
In Gregory's opinion, if the Western Powers were asked for aid by Finland, arid decided to send it, they would not do so until the spring. Submarines are slow moving vessels and as long as Russia’s under sea fleet was concentrated at Murmansk it might be dealt with in better weather. An aircraft carrier and flotillas of submarine chasers could be sent up there which would probably account for a considerable portion of it before the Expeditionary Force sailed. By the spring, too, it was said that the Allies' aircraft production would have caught up with that of Germany, which would better enable the Western Powers to protect their troops from aerial attack while disembarking.
It was a sad business, but, apart from volunteers such as had gone out to the Spanish war, Gregory did not feel that the Finns could really count on any military aid for the present unless Norway and Sweden decided that their own fate was linked with that of Finland.