Hardly has the fate of Finland been settled according to customary jungle-law than the European capitals are busy passing the buck. Helsinki blames Stockholm, Paris, and London; London blames Stockholm; Stockholm, London. Finland is fettered; the Allies have lost face; and a rare opportunity to strike Germany on her open flank is gone. Aggression scores another triumph; and the democracies smart under a defeat they feel might have been averted.

Who is responsible? Easy it is for Monday morning quarterbacks to throw in their happy afterthoughts, their "should-have done's." Perhaps the Allis "should have" decided earlier to bolster the Finn forces, but the gamble was a dangerous one. Gallipoli taught Mr. Churchill the costs of a troop-landing on unknown coasts. Britain could ill violate Scandinavian neutrality while posing as the enemy of international banditry. And an Allied expedition of at best 80,000 slodiers would hardly have withstood a Russo-German onslaught. As for Sweden, her unwillingness to serve as Lebensraum for frustrated World War II is certainly understandable.

Finland's government must have known the difficulties -- and the ultimate hopelessness -- of foreign intervention. Finland was not "forsaken," as her Foreign Minister now intones. Her geographical position was a natural stumbling-block to would-be helpers. She had no reason to assume last November that aid would come earlier. She must have realized that the Finnish people would have to carry the fight alone for many months. Yet Finland rejected all proposals "injurious to her national integrity," and chose to fight. She brought destruction upon herself for the sake of an ideal, in a war which she could not possibly win.

Perhaps it is too easy for us, behind the safety of the Atlantic tides, to say to an invaded country: "You are folish. You should not resist. You cannot win." Perhaps it is too easy for us to forget what freedom and homeland means, we who have not felt the boot of the tyrant for so long. Perhaps the cynicism which followed the First War has blinded us to the flesh-and-blood emotions which the peoples of Europe are feeling. And yet most Americans have heard the news with a sort of relief, a relief that the futility of the Scandinavian bloodshed should have come to an end, and that the inevitable ultimate should have been achieved.