The Civil Defence Act was promulgated on the 30th of last October [1939]. On the 30th of last November [1939] the Russkies started to give demonstrative tutorials about the vital importance of air raid shelters.
Experience tells also here that the better civil defence is organized, how strictly and quickly all the instructions of the authorities are obeyed, the lesser the losses on human lives will be.
The spirit of pulling the whole nation together should be demonstrated by submittance to discipline and order.
There prevails quite a common supposition that blackout orders should be obeyed only in Helsinki and its vicinity. Elsewhere, it is claimed, it is not so important to cover the windows of homes, workshops, cowsheds or stables, no need to paint cars white, no need to dim their headlights.
This is completely wrong.
Tens of persons have been fined for breaking blackout orders, for instance, by using undimmed electric torches. The same laws that apply in Helsinki are in force on every corner of our large country. Everywhere can fines be dispersed to persons, who are indifferent to lives and property of their neighbors, and this way, by their negligence in use of lights, they help the enemy.
As the days grow longer the need to cover light diminishes. Most of the people — excluding journalists — should learn — even in the cities — to wake up, at the latest, when the sun rises. And correspondingly, to be ready to retire earlier.
We all can put up nuisance to the flying devils by not furnishing them with flashing beacons after dark or neither by allowing our neighbors to give them light for their deeds of darkness. Light peeping out of a remote cowshed can be as useful for the flying devil, and as dangerous to people in the remote village, as is an electric light shining out to the street from an apartment in Helsinki to who whole section of the city. Both form a clear roadsign and target mark for the enemy.
When speaking about civil defence earlier in the autumn I pointed out that anti-aircraft guns and fighter are the best instruments for civil defence. Some people said then that I was too rude.
From the very first days of the war, reaching the whole nine weeks now, we have been given lessons that fighters and AA guns really are the best protective instruments.
Our enemy deliberately drops bombs on hospitals, too. Despite of being protected by the International Red Cross.
The Soviet Union is expelled from the League of Nations. But still now the majority of nations maintains some sort of friendly diplomatic relations with this worst enemy of the mankind.
Our international favour has not yet brought to us such a amount of assistance that we could keep the destructive heroes of Stalin, "the master of Europe and Asia", far away from our borders. As long as the mankind allows the present tyrants in Kremlin to rule and to dominate, as long it supposedly is impossible to protect all the dwellings, not even all hospitals, of our large country from the attacks of the savages.
Already seven hundred years ago the Popes in Rome gave their warnings not to sell arms to people in Novgorod, for the reason that already at the times of our bishop Thomas were exactly the same as now.
The Finnish Metalworkers' Union has started a money collection for the maintenance of air defence. The metalworkers themselves gives their support to the collection first of all by giving a day's earning for this.
Metalworkers if anybody have worked and work for our defence. Faithfully they now stand, as in past nine weeks, at their lathes, file benches, sledges and forges.
The poet Viljo Kajava just recently gave his respect to their work with these verses:
"Latheman, just calm down, at your
lathe bench:
each pair of the working men's hands
is now needed,
it is not only on the front
where the war is waged,
it is also in factories, mills,
everywhere,
where men keep their positions
at their working places."
True. As well as is the ardour that men feel when they desire to take posts on the front.
"Don't worry latheman, even when
you feel restless when
keeping the pace belonging to the peace time
knowing,
how your pals, many right now
"somewhere there"
make the guns and tanks to stop
on the road
making so, so to speak,
the real work.
The poet gives one warning more:
"Don't get annoyed when you
have to hurry to the
air raid shelter.
Just do that, when
your tools are aimed
even though you feel no eagerness
to stop the work
when everything runs fine — but
when a plane picks you up from the air
a wise thing is to hide
the head of a skilled worker."
But lathemen and other metal workers do feel anger: they want more AA guns. They want them for the safety of their jobs. They collect money among themselves, they work overtime, and on Sundays — to become protected against the flying devils.
There have been lots of collections, also running now. The whole of our defence is in an essential extension based just on voluntary work.
The metal workers' employers generously give their part into their workers' collections. Also others should keep this in memory —
against flying devils, on behalf of homes and jobs!