860D.51/468: Telegram
The Minister in Finland (Schoenfeld) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 14—11 a.m.]
12. In my first conversation with him since his appointment, Prime Minister Rangell9 told me today that Finnish Government remains hopeful of obtaining further credits from our Government though it will defer so requesting pending favorable opportunity. Such credit was needed chiefly for acquisition of essential civil supplies. He expressed some concern regarding reported possibility that American assets of all European countries including Finland may be sequestered.
The Prime Minister said that while the Finnish Diet is willing to grant all appropriations necessary for defense, which is in much better shape than prior to last winter’s hostilities with the Soviet Union, the local capital market is limited in capacity and presumably inadequate to meet both costs of defense and imports. Finnish Government meanwhile is going ahead with strengthening of defense since there is no assurance that Russian aggression will not be renewed when conditions seem favorable. No new and unfavorable developments had, however, taken place in relations with Soviet Union and answering my inquiry regarding amount of compensation to be paid for property removed from ceded areas, the Prime Minister said he did not know but even if it should amount to one or two billion marks it was comparatively little in the present scale of expenditure.
- Jukka (Johan) W. Rangell became Prime Minister of the reorganized Council of State on January 3, 1941.↩